Golden Fleece
4
9.9
- noun
- Literature
:
Vellocino de oro
- The Golden Fleece was a symbol of power and kingship, sought by many but held tightly by the king of Colchis.
- find the Golden Fleece
- search of the Golden Fleece
Examples
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In Greek mythology, the hero Jason embarked on a quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the clutches of a fierce dragon.
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Legend has it that the Golden Fleece could grant wealth and prosperity to those who possessed it.
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First, search for this Golden Fleece.
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Does the Golden Fleece exist?
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The Golden Fleece is worth a kingdom.
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The Golden Fleece can heal any living person or thing... including Thalia's tree.
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First she helped Jason to acquire the Golden Fleece from her home city of Colchis, which is in present day Georgia.
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Long ago, Greek bards sang of Jason, a prince denied his throne unless he could provide his usurper with the Golden Fleece.
Academic text (2003) -
It sat in people's hearts, even if it had taken place thousands of years ago, when a ship with fifty men on board sailed out of a Greek port in search of a golden fleece guarded by a dragon in a holy forest.
Fiction book (1997)
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is directly built from 'golden' + 'fleece', so a B1 learner who knows the words would likely infer a literal meaning of a fleece made of gold. However, the full meaning refers to a specific mythological object and its narrative/cultural significance (Jason and the Argonauts), which cannot be derived from the constituents alone, so some prior cultural knowledge is required.
Etymology
Golden Fleece comes from a Greek myth about a shining animal skin: the golden fleece was a sheep's skin that looked like gold, kept in a land called Colchis and guarded by a fierce dragon while Jason and the Argonauts tried to take it. So, the name now brings to mind a rare, very valuable prize or a dangerous quest to win something special.