Holy Grail
12
7.2
- noun
- /ˈhoʊli ɡreɪl/
:
Santo Grial
- This product is my Holy Grail right now.
And this might be a Holy Grail for people with alopecia.
- And this might be a Holy Grail for people with alopecia.
- Accreditations in some way are the Holy Grail of education.
- You know, in the idea of mathematics, the Holy Grail is to have a nice beautiful proof.
- So alignment is the Holy Grail of all acrobatics.
- And being in that state is like the Holy Grail of a writer.
- And so those people thought, OK, we found the Holy Grail.
- This has been like my Holy Grail of life.
- So that is Holy Grail eye cream.
- And this has always been the, the, the, the, the Holy Grail of rocketry.
Examples
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Accreditations in some way are the Holy Grail of education.
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Attention is the Holy Grail of selling a story.
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This has been like my Holy Grail of life.
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That was the Holy Grail that I was looking for.
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This is my Holy Grail hair treatment.
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Every man has to go after his own holy grail.
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I felt like I had just found the holy grail.
Fiction book (1995) -
And to me, the Holy Grail of interviews was Bill Gates.
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A fantastic work-life balance is arguably the holy grail of the modern working man or woman.
Blog text (8) -
Efficient, practical electric cars have been the Holy Grail of automotive manufacturers for the past decade.
Synonyms
15
8.8
An important goal people spend a long time trying to reach
5
4.1
A reward that someone hopes to get but finds hard to reach
A very special goal people hope to find after a long search
How Hard
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is a metaphorical extension: combining 'holy' (sacred, prized) with 'grail' (a rare or treasured object) yields the idea of a coveted ultimate goal, so part of the sense is predictable from the parts. However, the idiomatic use relies on cultural/figurative knowledge (Arthurian legend) and the noun 'grail' is low-frequency, so a B1 learner who only knows the literal constituents may not reliably infer the full idiomatic meaning.
Etymology
Holy Grail grew into a saying from stories of knights who spent years searching for the perfect, holy cup, so the long, hard hunt became a clear image. That's why calling something the Holy Grail today means it is the 'ultimate goal' or the thing people most want to find or achieve.