"WAIF" meaning in All languages combined

See WAIF on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: WAIFs [plural]
Etymology: A humorous reinterpretation of waif as an initialism for "why am I famous?". Head templates: {{en-noun}} WAIF (plural WAIFs)
  1. (informal, derogatory) A minor celebrity who does not deserve his or her fame. Tags: derogatory, informal Hypernyms: sublebrity Related terms: MAW
    Sense id: en-WAIF-en-noun-LxwuNItE Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "A humorous reinterpretation of waif as an initialism for \"why am I famous?\".",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "WAIFs",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "WAIF (plural WAIFs)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1996 October 19, Hester Lacey, “She's left her wild-child self behind, learned from her multitude of mistakes and even got a proper job. So why do we hate her?”, in The Independent:",
          "text": "Tamara was one of the original wild-child tribe - up to now, famous mainly for being famous. She has done a quantity of high-profile dabbling in modelling, acting, television and journalism (file under MAW - Model, Actress, Whatever - or WAIF - Why Am I Famous?)",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, Phil Strongman, Cocaine, page 91:",
          "text": "Jeff left with Johnny a few moments as I wondered if maybe the WAIFs were also getting paid to drape themselves around the place. You know what a WAIF is, one of those Why am I famous? people - an It Girl or He-Hunk or whatever. Maybe they'd been hired in too.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001 March 4, Harriet Lane, “First The Word, now the pictures”, in The Observer:",
          "text": "Amanda was arguably the first WAIF (Why Am I Famous): young, posh, blonde, buxom and desperate for attention, she danced on nightclub tables in a rubber dress in 1987, much to the consternation of tabloid readers and the staff at her Wiltshire boarding school, who were under the impression she had been tucked up in her dormitory at the time.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A minor celebrity who does not deserve his or her fame."
      ],
      "hypernyms": [
        {
          "word": "sublebrity"
        }
      ],
      "id": "en-WAIF-en-noun-LxwuNItE",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "celebrity",
          "celebrity"
        ],
        [
          "fame",
          "fame"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, derogatory) A minor celebrity who does not deserve his or her fame."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "MAW"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "WAIF"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "A humorous reinterpretation of waif as an initialism for \"why am I famous?\".",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "WAIFs",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "WAIF (plural WAIFs)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hypernyms": [
    {
      "word": "sublebrity"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "MAW"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1996 October 19, Hester Lacey, “She's left her wild-child self behind, learned from her multitude of mistakes and even got a proper job. So why do we hate her?”, in The Independent:",
          "text": "Tamara was one of the original wild-child tribe - up to now, famous mainly for being famous. She has done a quantity of high-profile dabbling in modelling, acting, television and journalism (file under MAW - Model, Actress, Whatever - or WAIF - Why Am I Famous?)",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, Phil Strongman, Cocaine, page 91:",
          "text": "Jeff left with Johnny a few moments as I wondered if maybe the WAIFs were also getting paid to drape themselves around the place. You know what a WAIF is, one of those Why am I famous? people - an It Girl or He-Hunk or whatever. Maybe they'd been hired in too.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001 March 4, Harriet Lane, “First The Word, now the pictures”, in The Observer:",
          "text": "Amanda was arguably the first WAIF (Why Am I Famous): young, posh, blonde, buxom and desperate for attention, she danced on nightclub tables in a rubber dress in 1987, much to the consternation of tabloid readers and the staff at her Wiltshire boarding school, who were under the impression she had been tucked up in her dormitory at the time.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A minor celebrity who does not deserve his or her fame."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "celebrity",
          "celebrity"
        ],
        [
          "fame",
          "fame"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, derogatory) A minor celebrity who does not deserve his or her fame."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "WAIF"
}

Download raw JSONL data for WAIF meaning in All languages combined (2.2kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-10-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-09-20 using wiktextract (3fd8a50 and 59b8406). 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.