leviathan

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a vast and powerful sea creature described in the Hebrew Bible

   In the biblical poem, Leviathan breaks weapons as if they were straw.

2. 2
   noun

   something or someone of enormous size, strength, or power

   The new cargo ship is a leviathan beside the fishing boats.

3. 3
   noun

   a powerful sovereign state, especially one conceived as dominating its individual members

   The theorist feared that emergency powers would create an unchecked leviathan.

Simplified etymology

Leviathan comes from the biblical name of a sea monster variously identified with a whale, a crocodile, or the Devil. The name has been used for something enormous since the early 17th century. Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise Leviathan, in which the monster represents sovereign power, gave rise to the later sense “an autocratic monarch or state.”

Through Late Latin and Middle English from Biblical Hebrew liwyatan, probably a name for a twisting or coiling sea creature, though the exact derivation is uncertain. The monster's immense power produced the general sense 'enormous thing.' Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) made it a lasting image of the sovereign state.

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary