Meaning
An appeal hard to resist that leads, if obeyed, to a bad end - the tempting offer, cause, or ideology whose believers end up wrecked. The siren song and the siren call are the same lure by different names. Usually followed by of - the siren call of easy money, of nationalism; it implies the listener knows better, which is what makes the story tragic rather than merely sad. Regional use: General English; classical origin.
Origin
In Book XII of the Odyssey, Circe warns Odysseus of the Sirens, whose song lures sailors to their doom; curious to hear it, he has his crew stop their ears with beeswax and lash him to the mast, ordering them to bind him tighter however he begs. The Sirens sing of universal knowledge - all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all - and later tradition held that they drowned themselves once a hearer escaped. Greek art drew them as human-headed birds; one etymology derives their name from words for binding, the entangler. The metaphor is fully settled: Wikipedia defines the siren song as an appeal hard to resist that leads to a bad conclusion, and Jane Ellen Harrison's verdict stands - the end of that song is death. Jack London wrote in 1914 that romance never sang to him her siren song, and Robert Zoellick was still warning leaders off the siren song of protectionist fixes in 2009.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a siren song
- siren call of
- the siren song of
Usage Examples
- The mayor resisted the siren call of the stadium deal, which had bankrupted two cities already.
- The siren song of the guaranteed return drew the pension fund into the shipping venture.
- Engineers hear a siren call in the rewrite-everything proposal, and most learn to row past it.