Sisyphus' task
Meaning
An unending, laborious, and ultimately futile undertaking that never reaches completion.
Origin
In ancient Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a cunning king of Ephyra (modern-day Corinth) renowned for his deceit. He repeatedly cheated death, even imprisoning Thanatos, the god of death, which grievously disrupted the natural order. For his hubris and trickery, Zeus, king of the gods, condemned Sisyphus to an eternal punishment in the underworld. His sentence was to endlessly roll a massive boulder up a steep hill; however, just as he neared the summit, the boulder would always slip from his grasp and roll back down to the bottom. This cycle of endless, fruitless labor became his eternal torment, giving us the phrase 'Sisyphus' task' to describe any similarly futile and never-ending effort.
Examples
- Trying to get all the data organized without a proper system felt like a Sisyphus' task, with new information constantly arriving.
- For the engineers, fixing the leaky dam was a Sisyphus' task; no sooner did they patch one crack than another appeared.