sleeping giant
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
A metaphor, maybe derived from Gulliver's Travels (1726),[1] and made popular by the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, see quotations.
Pronunciation[edit]
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun[edit]
sleeping giant (plural sleeping giants)
- (idiomatic) Someone or something with great, latent strength.
- 1926 June, C.E. Mahaffey, “The Sleeping Giant in Education”, in The Educational Screen, volume 5, page 335:
- There is a sleeping giant in education that is just beginning to awaken.
- 1970, Tora! Tora! Tora!, spoken by Isoroku Yamamoto:
- I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
- 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Systems Alliance: Military Doctrine Codex entry:
- The Council regards the Alliance as a sleeping giant. Less than 3% of humans volunteer to serve in their military, a lower proportion than any other species.
- 2010 April 30, Sophia Tareen for the Associated Press, “Anger over Ariz. immigration law drives US rallies”, in USA Today[1], archived from the original on 2010-05-01:
- Angered by a controversial Arizona immigration law, tens of thousands of protesters […] rallied in cities nationwide […] .
"I want to thank the governor of Arizona because she's awakened a sleeping giant," said labor organizer John Delgado, who attended a rally in New York where authorities estimated 6,500 gathered.
- 2012 September, Tom Zoellner, “The Myth of the Latino Vote”, in The Atlantic[2]:
- Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who has worked as an Arizona pollster for four decades, is skeptical that the Latino “sleeping giant” will wake anytime soon.
- 2022 March 1, Noah Barkin, “Europe’s Sleeping Giant Awakens”, in The Atlantic[3]:
- Europe’s Sleeping Giant Awakens [title, referring to Germany]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- “sleeping giant”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- ^ William Safire (2008) “sleeping giant”, in Safire's Political Dictionary, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 666