Myths & Parables

A weakness in spite of overall strength, which can lead to downfall.

The parable of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money, where they each sell items they own (watch and hair) to buy gifts for the other that, as it turns out in a twist ending, are no longer useful to the other (a watch chain a combs, respectively), an example of comic irony.

A term used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successful.

18th century Scottish term for lounging in bed long after it's time to get up.

An artifact in Greek mythology where an object that is originally seen as a gift turns out to in fact be a curse. The only thing remaining at the bottom of Pandora's Box is 'Hope.'

A classic fairytale of desiring to make-do with less, and the sacrifices we are willing to make to achieve our goals, where we become caught in a negative cycle of trying to do more and more with less and less, as we fall further and further behind.

A thought experiment that raises the question of whether a ship—standing for an object in general—that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.

Refers to a task that is both laborious (perhaps endless) and ultimately futile.

A folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys (and whereby the inedible stone can be removed when the neighboring ingredients are sufficient to make an actual soup), and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing.

A parable from the Greek Classical era of man who is offered to sit in on the King's throne for a, with a sword above him held only by a single hair, an allusion to the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power.

An expression of the problem of needing something to explain something to explain something, etc., where the expression alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that supports the earth on its back, and then the question being asked of what supports \*that\* turtle.

Often used a prefix that denotes the first or earliest of something, and in modern uses has come to imply the purest or most archetypal form of something.