Origin
The term is most-likely a reference to the Rubicon river, which in the time of the Roman Empire marked the boarded between Cisapline Gaul and Italy proper. Crossing the river with an army, as Julius Caesar did in 49 B.C., was illegal by Roman law and is commonly seen as the "point-of-no-return" for Caesar's revolution. As such, a "rubicon" can be used idiomatically as any strict dividing line or point-of-no-return.
Read more about this topic: Cerebral Rubicon
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)