Idiom
lord of the flies
Meaning
a ruler over a worthless kingdom; leader of a meaningless microcosm.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He acts like the lord of the flies in his messy room.”
“The manager treats his tiny, failing office like he is the lord of the flies.”
“Isolated on the abandoned island, the boy convinced himself he was the lord of the flies, ruling over a kingdom of dust and decay.”
Examples
simple
“He acts like the lord of the flies in his messy room.”
contextual
“The manager treats his tiny, failing office like he is the lord of the flies.”
complex
“Isolated on the abandoned island, the boy convinced himself he was the lord of the flies, ruling over a kingdom of dust and decay.”
Origin
Calque of Biblical Hebrew בַּעַל זְבוּב (baʿal zəḇûḇ, “fly-lord, Beelzebub”), which in turn is a mistranslation of the name of the Semitic devil Baal-zevuv.
Key words
Related idioms
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