GORDIAN KNOT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Gordian knot

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/gˈɔrdiən nɑt/ Listen

adjective

Gordian adj.

Pertaining to Gordius, king of Phrygia, or to a knot tied by him; hence, intricate; complicated; inextricable.

Gordian knot, an intricate knot tied by Gordius in the thong which connected the pole of the chariot with the yoke. An oracle having declared that he who should untie it should be master of Asia, Alexander the Great averted the ill omen of his inability to loosen it by cutting it with his sword. Hence, a Gordian knot is an inextricable difficulty; and to cut the Gordian knot is to remove a difficulty by bold and energetic measures.

(Zool.) Pertaining to the Gordiacea.

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Etymology of 'Gordian knot'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Gordian knot" Quotes from Famous Books

... some old Gordian knot, Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave, And with much ...

— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... the finall causes, for which the Law was made; the knowledge of which finall causes is in the Legislator. To him therefore there can not be any knot in the Law, insoluble; either by finding out the ends, to undoe it by; or else by making what ends he will, (as Alexander did with his sword in the Gordian knot,) by the Legislative power; which no other ...

— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... caught,—like other women who want to be caught, and who trust to chance to cut the Gordian knot of their indecision. So to Les ...

— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... the providence of God, there is a time for all things; a time when the sword may cut the Gordian knot, and set free the principles of right and justice, bound up in the meshes of hatred, revenge, and tyranny, that the pens of mighty men like Clay, Webster, Crittenden, and ...

— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... account, Ugalde knew that the sword would be necessary in order to cut the gordian knot of so obstinate an insurrection. He, believing that since the Zambals were so valiant and were especially experienced in the mountains, where the rebels had their haunts, they could be of great use to the army, wrote the father prior of Bolinao to procure a goodly levy of them, and send them out ...

— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

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