Meaning
A task of enormous size or difficulty, demanding exceptional strength, stamina, or endurance - work on a scale that ordinary effort will not touch. Its companion adjective, Herculean, covers anything requiring a huge amount of work. Slightly elevated register; Herculean is the everyday adjective and works for efforts of any kind, physical or bureaucratic. Regional use: General English; classical origin.
Origin
Hera struck Heracles with a madness that made him kill his own wife and children, and the Delphic oracle set his penance: twelve years of service to King Eurystheus, who set the labours - Apollodorus says ten were set and two refused, the Hydra because an assistant helped and the Augean stables because Heracles took payment, so two more were added. The list the Renaissance fixed - Nemean lion, Hydra, the Hind, the Boar, the Stymphalian birds, the Cretan Bull, the Mares of Diomedes, Hippolyta's belt, the Cattle of Geryon, the Apples of the Hesperides, Cerberus - has been shorthand for the near-impossible ever since. English took the adjective early: Shakespeare's 'How this Herculean Roman does become the carriage of his chafe' dates from around 1606-07, and Smollett in 1748 wrote that a man 'would find it a Herculean task to chastise everybody' who mocked him. The ancient allegorists were already there - Heraclitus the Grammarian read the labours as the clearing away of the foulness that disfigures humanity.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a Herculean task
- a labour of Heracles
- the twelve labours of Hercules
Usage Examples
- Cataloguing the archive was a labour of Hercules: four miles of shelving and no index since 1911.
- Clearing the backlog of inquests proved a Herculean task for a coroner's office running at half strength.
- Every airport expansion is now a labour of Hercules, less for the building than for the paperwork.