See monkey's paw on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From the 1902 short story \"The Monkey's Paw\" by W. W. Jacobs, in which a mummified monkey's paw is enchanted to grant a family three wishes, but with terrible consequences for them. Popularised by a segment based on Jacobs' story in the 1991 episode \"Treehouse of Horror II\" of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "monkey's paws",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "monkey's paw (plural monkey's paws)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "59 41",
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "The Simpsons",
"orig": "en:The Simpsons",
"parents": [
"American fiction",
"Animation",
"Disney",
"Fiction",
"United States",
"Mass media",
"Comics",
"Film",
"Television",
"Artistic works",
"North America",
"Culture",
"Media",
"Literature",
"Entertainment",
"Broadcasting",
"Art",
"America",
"Society",
"Communication",
"Writing",
"Telecommunications",
"Earth",
"All topics",
"Human behaviour",
"Language",
"Technology",
"Nature",
"Fundamental",
"Human"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2015 October 19, Sam Kriss with Thom Phipps, “Who really ever owns a tweet? The story of a 140-character message gone viral, and the man who stole it”, in The Daily Telegraph:",
"text": "It’s given me everything I thought I wanted – riches, lucre, affluence, having lots of money, and being very wealthy – but with monkey’s-paw precision it’s turned all my dreams against me.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2017 October 11, Helen Rosner, “What Le Cirque Will Be Remembered For”, in The New Yorker:",
"text": "It’s a monkey’s paw of a legacy, to have birthed an immortal gastronomic titan but not to have attained immortality of one’s own.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020 April 2, Brian Feldman, “Welcome (Back) to the Appointment Internet”, in New York:",
"text": "For many people, the extended period of quarantine and working from home necessitated by the coronavirus outbreak has turned into a monkey’s paw situation — a theoretical wish come true that has significant downsides.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 March 27, Brian Marks, “Tom Hanks' rapper son Chet Hanks gets lambasted on social media after declaring that 'white boy summer' is on the way”, in The Daily Mail:",
"text": "One person joked that Chet was the result of a monkey's paw situation with his father. ¶ 'Chet hanks is the price tom hanks paid to become tom hanks,' they wrote.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences."
],
"id": "en-monkey's_paw-en-noun-1gw8jdO0",
"links": [
[
"situation",
"situation"
],
[
"wish",
"wish"
],
[
"desire",
"desire"
],
[
"fulfilled",
"fulfil"
],
[
"cost",
"cost"
],
[
"ironic",
"ironic"
],
[
"unfavourable",
"unfavourable"
],
[
"consequence",
"consequence"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, usually attributive) A situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences."
],
"tags": [
"attributive",
"idiomatic",
"usually"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "29 71",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "18 82",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "13 87",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see monkey, paw."
],
"id": "en-monkey's_paw-en-noun-DLk95Dbo",
"links": [
[
"monkey",
"monkey#English"
],
[
"paw",
"paw#English"
]
],
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "7 93",
"word": "be careful what you wish for"
},
{
"_dis1": "7 93",
"word": "poisoned chalice"
},
{
"_dis1": "7 93",
"word": "Pyrrhic victory"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "24 76",
"word": "monkey paw"
},
{
"_dis1": "24 76",
"word": "monkey-paw"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-monkey's paw.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9b/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-monkey%27s_paw.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-monkey%27s_paw.wav.mp3",
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}
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Monkey's Paw",
"The Simpsons",
"Treehouse of Horror II",
"W. W. Jacobs"
],
"word": "monkey's paw"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:The Simpsons"
],
"etymology_text": "From the 1902 short story \"The Monkey's Paw\" by W. W. Jacobs, in which a mummified monkey's paw is enchanted to grant a family three wishes, but with terrible consequences for them. Popularised by a segment based on Jacobs' story in the 1991 episode \"Treehouse of Horror II\" of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "monkey's paws",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "monkey's paw (plural monkey's paws)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "be careful what you wish for"
},
{
"word": "poisoned chalice"
},
{
"word": "Pyrrhic victory"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2015 October 19, Sam Kriss with Thom Phipps, “Who really ever owns a tweet? The story of a 140-character message gone viral, and the man who stole it”, in The Daily Telegraph:",
"text": "It’s given me everything I thought I wanted – riches, lucre, affluence, having lots of money, and being very wealthy – but with monkey’s-paw precision it’s turned all my dreams against me.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2017 October 11, Helen Rosner, “What Le Cirque Will Be Remembered For”, in The New Yorker:",
"text": "It’s a monkey’s paw of a legacy, to have birthed an immortal gastronomic titan but not to have attained immortality of one’s own.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2020 April 2, Brian Feldman, “Welcome (Back) to the Appointment Internet”, in New York:",
"text": "For many people, the extended period of quarantine and working from home necessitated by the coronavirus outbreak has turned into a monkey’s paw situation — a theoretical wish come true that has significant downsides.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 March 27, Brian Marks, “Tom Hanks' rapper son Chet Hanks gets lambasted on social media after declaring that 'white boy summer' is on the way”, in The Daily Mail:",
"text": "One person joked that Chet was the result of a monkey's paw situation with his father. ¶ 'Chet hanks is the price tom hanks paid to become tom hanks,' they wrote.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences."
],
"links": [
[
"situation",
"situation"
],
[
"wish",
"wish"
],
[
"desire",
"desire"
],
[
"fulfilled",
"fulfil"
],
[
"cost",
"cost"
],
[
"ironic",
"ironic"
],
[
"unfavourable",
"unfavourable"
],
[
"consequence",
"consequence"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, usually attributive) A situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences."
],
"tags": [
"attributive",
"idiomatic",
"usually"
]
},
{
"glosses": [
"Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see monkey, paw."
],
"links": [
[
"monkey",
"monkey#English"
],
[
"paw",
"paw#English"
]
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-monkey's paw.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9b/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-monkey%27s_paw.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Flame%2C_not_lame-monkey%27s_paw.wav.mp3",
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}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "monkey paw"
},
{
"word": "monkey-paw"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Monkey's Paw",
"The Simpsons",
"Treehouse of Horror II",
"W. W. Jacobs"
],
"word": "monkey's paw"
}
Download raw JSONL data for monkey's paw meaning in All languages combined (3.7kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.