Lexical Compendium

Wait... what is this? Sometimes I come across a word, phrase, idiom, quote, reference, bit of slang, person of interest, etc that either I don't know or I find amusing, interesting, etc. This is a collection of those items so that I can refer back to them in emails, texts, etc.

Recent Entries:

Tag Cloud

vocabulary slang quote politics eponymous ai science television space music word jargon movie idiom history computer-science covid thagomizer civil war shiva toffee bezos computer_science grammar earth krishna software latin movies lindy economy bees leahy ants aussie lincoln writing neologism disinformation pie chickpeas abrogate spanish pulses paradox aphorism entertainment desert religion podcast food stegosaurus astronaut engineering book foreign language aws vision israel-hamas war lindy effect clock social_insect government language virus war international time Don Quixote story screamo ottoman foreign metaphor grumbletonian games lindy's law banana plot amazon ice succession law apollo sockdologizing trading_places quotes acronym expression paleontology engine clerks spoonerism legal poem british op-ed far side public_health carl_sagan geography hindu dinosaur creole

"Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds"

An English translation of a line from The Bhagavad Gita, written in Sanskrit. A more accurate translation is "Time I am, destroyer of the worlds..."

I first encountered this expression in the late 90s on the CAKE BBS. It appears many times in popular culture:

  • Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer
  • Bolivar in s01e07 of Xmen '97
  • Captain Ramius' diary in Hunt for Red October
  • Caleb Smith in Ex Machina

And probably many more.


(link to this entry)

References:

Tags: hindu, shiva, krishna

Date Added: Unknown