phrase
Greek
Achilles' Heel
/ษหkษชliหz hiหl/
A single critical weakness in an otherwise strong person, thing, or system.
Origin
In Greek myth, Achilles' mother Thetis dipped her infant son in the river Styx to make him invulnerable. She held him by one heel, which stayed dry โ the only part of him that could be wounded. He went on to become the greatest warrior at Troy and was eventually killed by an arrow to that heel.
Modern usage
Any singular vulnerability that undoes an otherwise strong thing โ a star player's bad knee, a company's reliance on one customer, a politician's one scandal.
In the wild
Latency is the achilles heel of every real-time app.โ common engineering aphorism
Tags
weakness
tragedy
warrior