"how the mighty have fallen" meaning in English

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Phrase

Etymology: The phrase originates in the Old Testament, 2 Samuel 1:19. The earliest version in English is found in the Great Bible, 1539: "Oh howe are the myghtie ouerthrowen." The modern word "fallen" version is found in the King James Version, 1611 and is an expression of David's lament over Saul and Jonathan: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!" Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} how the mighty have fallen
  1. Used to imply the decline of a once-great person or entity. Related terms: the bigger they are, the harder they fall Translations (proverb): kuinka ovatkaan sankarit kaatuneet [biblical, religion, lifestyle] (Finnish), ce n’est plus ce que c’était (French), אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים (ech naflú gibborím) (Hebrew), jak potężny upada (Polish), quién te ha visto y quién te ve [colloquial] (Spanish)
    Sense id: en-how_the_mighty_have_fallen-en-phrase-lZH4hmFk Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for how the mighty have fallen meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "The phrase originates in the Old Testament, 2 Samuel 1:19.\nThe earliest version in English is found in the Great Bible, 1539: \"Oh howe are the myghtie ouerthrowen.\"\nThe modern word \"fallen\" version is found in the King James Version, 1611 and is an expression of David's lament over Saul and Jonathan: \"The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!\"",
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      "expansion": "how the mighty have fallen",
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to imply the decline of a once-great person or entity."
      ],
      "id": "en-how_the_mighty_have_fallen-en-phrase-lZH4hmFk",
      "links": [
        [
          "decline",
          "decline#English"
        ],
        [
          "entity",
          "entity#English"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "the bigger they are, the harder they fall"
        }
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "proverb",
          "topics": [
            "biblical",
            "religion",
            "lifestyle"
          ],
          "word": "kuinka ovatkaan sankarit kaatuneet"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "proverb",
          "word": "ce n’est plus ce que c’était"
        },
        {
          "code": "he",
          "lang": "Hebrew",
          "roman": "ech naflú gibborím",
          "sense": "proverb",
          "word": "אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "proverb",
          "word": "jak potężny upada"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "proverb",
          "tags": [
            "colloquial"
          ],
          "word": "quién te ha visto y quién te ve"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "how the mighty have fallen"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "The phrase originates in the Old Testament, 2 Samuel 1:19.\nThe earliest version in English is found in the Great Bible, 1539: \"Oh howe are the myghtie ouerthrowen.\"\nThe modern word \"fallen\" version is found in the King James Version, 1611 and is an expression of David's lament over Saul and Jonathan: \"The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!\"",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "how the mighty have fallen",
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "the bigger they are, the harder they fall"
    }
  ],
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to imply the decline of a once-great person or entity."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "decline",
          "decline#English"
        ],
        [
          "entity",
          "entity#English"
        ]
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  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "proverb",
      "topics": [
        "biblical",
        "religion",
        "lifestyle"
      ],
      "word": "kuinka ovatkaan sankarit kaatuneet"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "proverb",
      "word": "ce n’est plus ce que c’était"
    },
    {
      "code": "he",
      "lang": "Hebrew",
      "roman": "ech naflú gibborím",
      "sense": "proverb",
      "word": "אֵיךְ נָפְלוּ גִבּוֹרִים"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "proverb",
      "word": "jak potężny upada"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "proverb",
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ],
      "word": "quién te ha visto y quién te ve"
    }
  ],
  "word": "how the mighty have fallen"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.