Nessus shirt

English


Etymology

In Greek mythology, a shirt (chiton) soaked with the poisoned blood of the centaur Nessus that killed Heracles upon wearing it.

Noun

Nessus shirt (plural Nessus shirts)

  1. (figuratively) A fatal present or inescapable fate.
    • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 189:
      No wonder then that, with this age-long suppression (necessary in a sense though it may have been) which marks the Christian dispensation, there should have been associated endless Sickness and Crime and sordid Poverty, the Crucifixion of animals in the name of Science and of human workers in the name of Wealth, and wars and horrors innumerable! Hercules writhing in the Nessus-shirt or Prometheus nailed to the rocks are only as figures of a toy miniature compared with this vision of the great and divine Spirit of Man caught in the clutches of those dread Diseases which through the centuries have been eating into his very heart and vitals.

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