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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > WATERLOO

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pronounce WATERLOO:

WOT ur loo
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connect this word to others:

To meet your waterloo is to suffer a final defeat: a drubbing, a trouncing, a sh____cking. Game over, man.

Can you recall that last synonym? Barack Obama famously used it in 2010 after losing control of the legislature: "I'm not recommending for every future president that they take a sh____cking like I did last night."

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) 

definition:

In 1815, in the Belgian village of Waterloo, Napoleon and his army fought for the last time and were absolutely crushed. They suffered terrible losses. Just a few days later, Napoleon gave up his power.

So, we've used the word "waterloo" like this in English since 1816: if you "meet your waterloo," you experience a crushing, decisive, final defeat.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Noun, the countable kind: "They met their waterloo."

Other forms: 

None are common.

how to use it:

When you want a grand, dramatic, historical synonym of "defeat," and you want to compare the defeated person or thing to the fallen emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, pick "waterloo."

If you like, use a capital letter to acknowledge that Waterloo is, at least figuratively, a place where someone is defeated.

Talk about someone meeting their waterloo. For example, here's Sam Leith: "President Nixon met his Waterloo over the Watergate burglary."

Or, refer to some loss or defeat as someone's waterloo. Here's Margaret Sullivan: "Maybe the pullout from Afghanistan really will go down as Biden's Waterloo."

examples:

"The Crash of '29: Wall Street's Waterloo... On the 50th anniversary of Black Tuesday, those who lived through the crash describe the atmosphere and the aftermath."
   — Staff, NPR, 25 October 2005

"The F.C.C. has to approve the transaction. To do so, the agency must find that the merger is in the public interest... For many consumers and other interest groups, including competitors, this F.C.C. approval requirement is the waterloo of cable and broadband access."
  — Steven Davidoff Soloman, New York Times, 13 November 2014

has this page helped you understand "waterloo"?

   

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.


study it:

Explain the meaning of "waterloo" without saying "annihilation" or "crushing failure."

try it out:

In a letter, Lord Byron wrote that his "mind wanted something craggy to break upon," so he decided to learn Armenian. The Armenian alphabet, he wrote, was "a Waterloo of an Alphabet." 

It might break me, too:


With this in mind as an example, describe something you tried to learn or do that turned out to be your waterloo: something so difficult that it kind of broke you. Was the experience worth it?




before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is "Fill In For the Poet." 

I'll give you a few lines from a poem, with a blank where a word that we've studied before appears, along with the word's definition. See if you can come up with it. If you can't, that's fine: fill in the blank to your satisfaction.

Here's an example:

From Arthur Sze's poem "Chrysalis:"

     on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light

     _____ in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous
     as Venus at dawn?

Definition: "move up and down or side to side, or ripple."

Answer: "undulate."

Try this today:

From Rhina P. Espaillat's poem "Find Work:"

     So her kind was taught to do—
     "Find work," she would reply to every grief—
     and her one _____, whether false or true,
     tolled heavy with her passionate belief.

Definition: "rule or wise saying."

To see the word the poet chose, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. A pretty close opposite of WATERLOO could be

A. GRAND SLAM.
B. KEY LIVELIHOOD.
C. WITHERING CRITICISM.

2. In their song "Waterloo," ABBA likens falling in love to being _____.

A. spun like a top
B. crushed in a battle
C. dragged under a river




Answers to the review questions:
1. A
2. B

From the game: dictum.


a final word:


I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.


From my blog:
On vocabulary...
      36 ways to study words.
      Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
      How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
On writing...
      How to improve any sentence.
      How to motivate our kids to write.
      How to stop procrastinating and start writing.
      How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count.

From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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