Goliath

How to spell goliath

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce goliath

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does goliath mean?

1. nounA person, organisation, or thing of enormous size, strength, or influence.

Goliath in a sentence

• The small bakery somehow competed with the supermarket goliath down the road.

• The new crane was a goliath that towered over the entire dockyard.

Where does goliath come from?

Language of origin: Hebrew

The word comes from the Hebrew name Golyath, borne by the Philistine champion whom the young David felled with a single stone in the biblical book of First Samuel. The name itself is of uncertain meaning and may have non-Semitic, possibly Philistine, roots, so its literal sense is not securely known. Through centuries of Bible reading in English, the giant's name slipped into ordinary use as a label for anyone or anything of overwhelming size or power, much as 'David and Goliath' became shorthand for an unequal contest. The lowercase noun was well established in English by the seventeenth century. The spelling preserves the older transliteration with its 'th' ending, which is why the word never takes the simpler 't' that the sound might suggest.

How the word is built

• goliath (from the proper name Goliath, the giant Philistine warrior; used as a common noun for any giant)