Iliomachy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A prolonged struggle or conflict resembling the legendary war fought over the city of Troy in ancient Greek epic
2. The epic combat of the Trojan War, the great siege recounted in Homer's poem about Troy and its heroes
3. Warfare on the scale of the mythical Trojan conflict, a long and fierce contest of the kind described in the Iliad

Etymology: Iliomachy comes from Greek "Iliomakhia," a compound of "Ilios" (Troy) and "makhē" (battle), so it literally means "battle of Troy." The word refers to the Trojan War as an epic struggle, and it was used in English for the long, drawn-out conflict that Homer's Iliad sets in motion. Its most famous application is in the mock-heroic tradition. The word could be turned into a joke by applying it to small, trivial quarrels, which is how writers have used it to describe prolonged disputes that are blown up to epic proportions.