"lead balloon" meaning in All languages combined

See lead balloon on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: lead balloons [plural]
Etymology: From go down like a lead balloon and similar expressions. Head templates: {{en-noun}} lead balloon (plural lead balloons)
  1. A failure, especially something that fails to have the intended resonance with an audience.
    Sense id: en-lead_balloon-en-noun-S7g43BRT Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "From go down like a lead balloon and similar expressions.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lead balloons",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "lead balloon (plural lead balloons)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              135,
              147
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2019 November 17, Robert Robb, “Trump wants Republicans to defend him. But it's hard to defend the indefensible”, in The Arizona Republic:",
          "text": "After the collusion story proved a bust, there was an attempt to blow some life into the obstruction of justice charge. But that was a lead balloon with the American people.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              92,
              105
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2025 May 3, @itazurakko999, X:",
          "text": "He does it because it establishes the primary deniability of \"I was just trolling\" when his lead balloons fail to go over",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A failure, especially something that fails to have the intended resonance with an audience."
      ],
      "id": "en-lead_balloon-en-noun-S7g43BRT",
      "links": [
        [
          "failure",
          "failure"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "lead balloon"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From go down like a lead balloon and similar expressions.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lead balloons",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "lead balloon (plural lead balloons)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              135,
              147
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2019 November 17, Robert Robb, “Trump wants Republicans to defend him. But it's hard to defend the indefensible”, in The Arizona Republic:",
          "text": "After the collusion story proved a bust, there was an attempt to blow some life into the obstruction of justice charge. But that was a lead balloon with the American people.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              92,
              105
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2025 May 3, @itazurakko999, X:",
          "text": "He does it because it establishes the primary deniability of \"I was just trolling\" when his lead balloons fail to go over",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A failure, especially something that fails to have the intended resonance with an audience."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "failure",
          "failure"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "lead balloon"
}

Download raw JSONL data for lead balloon meaning in All languages combined (1.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-02 using wiktextract (6fdc867 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.