Word of the Day: June 13, 2009 - juggernaut

juggernaut (juhg-er-nawt) - noun

A juggernaut is " any large, overpowering, destructive force or object, as war, a giant battleship, or a powerful football team." Can also mean "anything requiring blind devotion or cruel sacrifice."

First used in the written form around 1630–1640. Hindi Jagganath is a title of Krishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, of the god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes from Sanskrit Jaganatha, a compound of jagat- (meaning world) and nathas (meaning lord). It is applied also to a large wagon on which an image of the god is carried in procession (notably in an annual festival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indian state of Orissa). It used to be said, apocryphally, worshippers of Krisha threw themselves under the wheels of the wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an "irresistible crushing force." The current application to large heavy trucks is prefigured as long ago as 1841 in William Thackeray's Second Funeral of Napolean where it reads: "Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break and transferred to the car; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine." However, it did not become firmly established until the late 1960s.

Comments

[Shay]

How spot on is your timing?! I was wondering about the origins of this very word just the other day.
Thanks Jinxi!
xo-
Shay