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Nov 13, 2009
This week's theme
Words related to horses

This week's words
horse-and-buggy
horse latitudes
stalking horse
hobbyhorse
Trojan horse

Trojan horse
Trojan Horse from the movie Troy
Trojan Horse from the movie Troy, now preserved in Çanakkale, Turkey
Photo: Ross Burgess

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Verbs

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

Trojan horse

PRONUNCIATION:
(TRO-juhn hors)

MEANING:
noun: Something or someone placed in order to subvert from within.

ETYMOLOGY:
In the legendary Trojan War, the Greeks left a large hollow wooden horse at the gates of the city of Troy. The Trojans took it inside. Greek soldiers hidden in the horse came out at night and opened the gates of the city, allowing the Greek army to enter and conquer the Trojans. In computing, a Trojan horse is a program that, while seemingly useful, steals passwords or does other damage to computers.

USAGE:
"Ministers appear determined to use the Coroners and Justice Bill as a Trojan horse with which to smuggle authoritarian measures on to the statute book."
Resist These Attempts to Make Justice Secret; The Independent (London, UK); Oct 22, 2009.

See more usage examples of Trojan horse in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Literature becomes the living memory of a nation. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)

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