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Great Expectations vocabulary
4 mythology vocabulary words
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myrmidon
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tags: [mythology]
► definition
Definition:1. a legendary inhabitants of Thessaly who were commanded by Achilles during the Trojan warZeus created them from a colony of ants - their name comes from the Greek word for "ant"2. a soldier who executes orders without question or remorse
► uses
Uses:
They say the Myrmidons returned home safely under Achilles' son Neoptolemus; so also did the valiant son of Poias, Philoctetes. Idomeneus, again, lost no men at sea, and all his followers who escaped death in the field got safe home with him to Crete.
Homer. The Odyssey (Butler translation)
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my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of Justice, specially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush behind the gate;—whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in those grave-clothes of hers,
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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they were a species of soldier-blackguards. These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of the executioner.
Victor Hugo. Les Miserables.
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