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   tall poppy

   noun

   • 1. a person who is conspicuously successful and whose success frequently attracts envious hostility: informal Australian, New Zealand "this is a nation that likes to win, but it also prides itself on its tendency to cut down tall poppies"

   Word Origin mid 19th century: from an obsolete sense of poppy1 ‘a conspicuous or prominent person or thing’, probably with reference to Tarquinius Superbus, a king of ancient Rome who demonstrated how to deal with potential enemies by cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden (Livy 1.54.6).

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