"sleeping giant" meaning in English

{
  "etymology_text": "A metaphor, maybe derived from Gulliver's Travels (1726), and made popular by the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, see quotations.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sleeping giants",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "sleeping giant"
      },
      "expansion": "sleeping giant (plural sleeping giants)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1926 June, C.E. Mahaffey, “The Sleeping Giant in Education”, in The Educational Screen, volume 5, page 335",
          "text": "There is a sleeping giant in education that is just beginning to awaken.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970, Tora! Tora! Tora!, spoken by Isoroku Yamamoto",
          "text": "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Systems Alliance: Military Doctrine Codex entry",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010 April 30, Sophia Tareen for the Associated Press, “Anger over Ariz. immigration law drives US rallies”, in USA Today, archived from the original on 2010-05-01",
          "text": "Angered by a controversial Arizona immigration law, tens of thousands of protesters[…] rallied in cities nationwide[…].\n\"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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 September, Tom Zoellner, “The Myth of the Latino Vote”, in The Atlantic",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 March 1, Noah Barkin, “Europe’s Sleeping Giant Awakens”, in The Atlantic",
          "text": "Europe’s Sleeping Giant Awakens [title, referring to Germany]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone or something with great, latent strength."
      ],
      "id": "en-sleeping_giant-en-noun-GO1xSU7N",
      "links": [
        [
          "latent",
          "latent"
        ],
        [
          "strength",
          "strength"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Someone or something with great, latent strength."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "let sleeping dogs lie"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Gulliver's Travels",
        "Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote",
        "Tora! Tora! Tora!"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-sleeping giant.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/18/En-au-sleeping_giant.ogg/En-au-sleeping_giant.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/En-au-sleeping_giant.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "sleeping giant"
}

{
  "etymology_text": "A metaphor, maybe derived from Gulliver's Travels (1726), and made popular by the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, see quotations.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sleeping giants",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "sleeping giant"
      },
      "expansion": "sleeping giant (plural sleeping giants)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "let sleeping dogs lie"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1926 June, C.E. Mahaffey, “The Sleeping Giant in Education”, in The Educational Screen, volume 5, page 335",
          "text": "There is a sleeping giant in education that is just beginning to awaken.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1970, Tora! Tora! Tora!, spoken by Isoroku Yamamoto",
          "text": "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Systems Alliance: Military Doctrine Codex entry",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010 April 30, Sophia Tareen for the Associated Press, “Anger over Ariz. immigration law drives US rallies”, in USA Today, archived from the original on 2010-05-01",
          "text": "Angered by a controversial Arizona immigration law, tens of thousands of protesters[…] rallied in cities nationwide[…].\n\"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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 September, Tom Zoellner, “The Myth of the Latino Vote”, in The Atlantic",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 March 1, Noah Barkin, “Europe’s Sleeping Giant Awakens”, in The Atlantic",
          "text": "Europe’s Sleeping Giant Awakens [title, referring to Germany]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone or something with great, latent strength."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "latent",
          "latent"
        ],
        [
          "strength",
          "strength"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Someone or something with great, latent strength."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Gulliver's Travels",
        "Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote",
        "Tora! Tora! Tora!"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-sleeping giant.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/18/En-au-sleeping_giant.ogg/En-au-sleeping_giant.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/En-au-sleeping_giant.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "sleeping giant"
}