Nemean lion
1
9.9
- noun
- Literature
:
león nemeo
- If the frieze is viewed as moving predominantly from right to left, then the endpoints of the action, the beginning of the charge to battle, and the final adventus mark the limits of the frieze in much the same way as Herakles must fight the Nemean lion first and be apotheosized last.
Examples
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Thus, he always kills the Nemean lion first, so that he will be properly equipped for his other deeds.
Academic text (1999) -
He had killed another memorable lion near Thebes, but the pelt on his back came from the Nemean lion.
Fiction book (1996) -
The plane tree, the only landscape element, is merely an outsize version of earlier solitary trees that often appear in Greek renditions of Herakles wrestling the Nemean lion.
Academic text (1999) -
Hercules was famous for his strength, and one of his greatest feats was slaying the Nemean lion as his first labor.
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In many depictions of Greek mythology, the Nemean lion is represented as an enormous beast with an impenetrable hide.
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The hero's first challenge involved facing the fearsome Nemean lion, a creature that terrorized the countryside.
Synonyms
389
1.0
A large wild cat with a tawny coat and a shaggy mane on males
A lion that people think is powerful and noble
Surface Forms
Morphology
Knowing 'Nemean' (from Nemea) and 'lion' (the animal) allows a learner to infer that this is a lion associated with Nemea, so the basic referent is transparently compositional. However, the specific mythological properties (its enormous size, invulnerable skin, and the story of Hercules killing it) are not derivable from the parts, making the full encyclopedic meaning unpredictable without prior cultural knowledge.
Etymology
Nemean lion comes from an old Greek story about a huge lion from Nemea whose thick fur could not be cut by swords or arrows. Hercules killed it with his bare hands and wore its skin as a coat, so the name now means a 'very strong, almost impossible to beat' lion in stories.