Juggernaut

We often see juggernaut used in product names, like Pyramid Brewery's Juggernaut Red Ale, but we don't really think about the implications behind the word. The definition from the AHD is:

1. Something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed.
2. An overwhelming, advancing force that crushes or seems to crush everything in its path.

A juggernaut then is something physically overwhelming, even crushing. Etymologically, that idea is embedded in the history of the word. Juggernaut is derived from Hindi jagannath, one of the titles of the deity Krishna. The Hindi word is from Sanskrit jagannathah, "lord of the world," and is actually a compound formed from jagat, moving, the world (from an even earlier present participle of jigati, he goes) + nathah, lord (from nathate, he helps, protects). Jagat goes all the way back to the Proto Indo-European root *gwa(m)-. *Gwa- is the root that gave us "go" and "come" and English and is also responsible for Latin "venire" to come.

The two primary definitions of juggernaut stem from an annual procession that is part of the Rath Yatra festival in June at Puri in the Orissa region of east-central India. In the procession a giant chariots carrying a sacred idol of Krishna as Jagannath are drawn by devout worshippers and Hindu priests, surrounded by thousands of onlookers. In the past, worshippers are said to have thrown themselves under the wheels of the giant chariot in religious ecstasy, only to be crushed.