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Monday, March 20, 2006

An apt word.

"One more such victory and we are lost," exclaimed Pyrrhus, king of Epirus,
as he described his costly success in the battle of Asculum in Apulia.
With those words he gave us a metaphor to refer to a victory so costly
that it's barely better than defeat.

If we talk to those who lost their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers,
husbands, wives and other loved ones in war, every victory is a Pyrrhic
victory. A war is perhaps the only occasion when killing a person is not
just accepted but rewarded. If only we could learn to fight wars only with
words. Till then, let's look at a few words of war.


Pyrrhic victory (PIR-ik VIK-tuh-ree) noun

A victory won at too great a cost.

[After Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who suffered staggering losses in
defeating the Romans.]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=pyrrhic+victory

-Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org)

"With lawsuits multiplying like crazy and mutual accusations of
stealing the election spiralling out of control, almost any result
now looks as if it will be a Pyrrhic victory."
United States: Whatever Will They Think of Next?; The Economist
(London, UK); Nov 25, 2000.

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