| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| hero |
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| SYLLABICATION: | he·ro |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  hîr  |
| NOUN: | Inflected forms: pl. he·roes
1. In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods. 2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war. 3. A person noted for special achievement in a particular field: the heroes of medicine. See synonyms at celebrity. 4. The principal male character in a novel, poem, or dramatic presentation. 5. Chiefly New York City See submarine (sense 2). See Regional Note at submarine. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Earlier heroe, back-formation from heroes, heroes, from Latin h rs, pl. of hrs, from Greek. See ser-1 in Appendix I. | | USAGE NOTE: | Many writers now consider hero, long restricted to men in the sense “a person noted for courageous action,” to be a gender-neutral term. It is used to refer to admired women as well as men in respected publications, as in this quotation from The Washington Post: “Already a national hero in her economically troubled South Korea, . . . [Se Ri] Pak is packing galleries at [golf] tournaments stateside.” The word heroine is still useful, however, in referring to the principal female character of a fictional work: Jane Eyre is a well-known literary heroine. Ninety-four percent of Usage Panelists accept this usage.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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