Syntactic analysis and the meaning of phraseology "Achilles' heel"

You must have heard how your friends mockingly discuss a person, using in their speech incomprehensible speech speech to you: "The Achilles' heel of this student is mathematics." And so on and so forth. This expression is probably of interest to you, and a question like "What is the meaning of the phraseological" Achilles' heel "?

To ask shame and scary - suddenly laugh and turn a finger at his temple! Familiar philologists among your friends do not have to ask. And in the search engines for the query "Achilles heel: meaning", each site gives its own interpretation of this phraseology, and each of the following is different from the previous one. But if you stumbled upon this article, consider that you are lucky! Below we will explain in detail the meaning of phraseology "Achilles' heel", or "heel of Achilles."

First, let's make a syntactic analysis of this phrase. It consists of two words: "Achilles" and "heel". We find out which parts of speech they belong to.

The word "heel" answers the question "what?", Has a female gender, can vary by case (heel, fifth, fifth, fifth, fifth) and has the 1st declination, which means that it is a noun. Its synonym is "heel".

The word "Achilles" answers the questions "what ?, whose?", Has a female gender and changes by case (Achilles, Achilles), hence, based on the above characteristics, is the adjective. Noun, from which it is formed - "Achilles".

The phrase "Achilles' heel" has the structure "adjective + noun". The method of syntactically connecting words in it is an agreement.

Now we turn to the linguistic part: we find out the literary meaning of the phraseological "Achilles' heel". If you read the paragraph about the adjective in this phrase, you already understood that the root of both it and all phraseology is a word, or rather a name: Achilles.

If you read Ancient Greek mythology, then you probably know the word "Achilles" or, as some sources say, "Achilles." This is the name of one of the participants in the Trojan War. The origin of the expression under discussion now is closely related to the death of this hero. His ... No, stop. Until you understand the whole life of Achilles, you will not understand anything when I say about his death.

The birth of Achilles was predicted by Zeus Prometem, chained to the rock. He warned the Thunderer that he would not marry the sea goddess Thetis, or they would have a son who would be stronger than his father. Zeus listened to Prometheus and gave thetis to his wife the great hero Peleus, the king of the Myrmidonians. Soon they had a son named Achilles. To make his son invulnerable, thetis, holding Achilles by the heel, dipped him in the waters of the sacred river Styx. And he became impervious to arrows, fire and sword, only the heel, held by his mother, remained the only vulnerable place on his entire body.

In childhood, Achilles was brought up by his friend Phoenix and Centaur Chiron. Soon, according to the requirements of Odysseus and Nestor, and also fulfilling the will of his father, Achilles joined the campaign against Troy. His mother, the prophesying goddess Thetis, knowing that nothing good for Achilles would end, trying to save her son, hid him from the king Skyros Lycomedes among the daughters of the latter, dressing his son in women's clothes.

But Odysseus found out about this and decided to go for a trick. He came to Lykomed's palace and laid out before the princesses women's jewelry and weapons. All the daughters of King Skyros began to admire the ornaments, and only one grabbed the weapon. This was Achilles, who, learning the art of weapons since childhood, could not resist the temptation to take it. Odysseus immediately made a noise, and the unmasked Achilles was forced to join a group of Greeks.

In the battles, Achilles proved himself to be an excellent warrior, 72 Trojans fell from his hand. But in the last battle he was killed by the arrow of Paris, which he let him directly into that most vulnerable heel. In the following, Achilles's body was redeemed for an equal weight of gold.

This is the whole legend of Achilles. Probably, you have already understood the meaning of phraseology. In this myth, the Achilles heel is, let's say, the heel part of Achilles, which was the only vulnerable part of his body. And in the role of phraseology it means a weak or vulnerable place, a topic, etc. In humans, although in appearance it seems invulnerable.

There is a lot of idiom in the Russian language. And the conversation, in which the subject of discussion - the meaning of phraseology "Achilles' heel", is not the only one among the many questions on the theme "Winged expressions." Another huge number of phraseological units does not have such a catchy meaning. But we'll talk about them some other time.