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Monday, November 12, 2007

Word of the Week # 14

myrmidon \MUR-muh-don; -duhn\, noun:

1. (Capitalized) A member of a warlike Thessalian people who followed Achilles on the expedition against Troy.

2. A loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question, protest, or pity.

"He risked assassination, torture or . . . retaliation, the defining signatures of Mr. Milosevic and his ultranationalist myrmidons."
-- Bruce Fein, "Follow U.S. war crimes advice?", Washington Times, May 10, 2001

"Those who created EMU [(European) Economic and Monetary Union] -- mainly politicians and their myrmidons in the offices and conference rooms of Brussels -- portray a beckoning landscape of wealth, liberty and economic power that will rival the United States and surpass Asia."
-- James O. Jackson, "The One-Way Bridge", Time, May 11, 1998

Myrmidon derives from Greek Myrmidones, a warlike people of ancient Thessaly

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