"old college try" meaning in All languages combined

See old college try on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: old college tries [plural]
Etymology: From the ambitiousness of college athletes. Earliest known use from 1914. Perhaps popularized by a 1917 sermon of the same name by preacher and professional baseball player Billy Sunday (see citations). Head templates: {{en-noun|head=old college try}} old college try (plural old college tries)
  1. (informal) A vigorous, committed attempt or effort, often in the context of a nearly hopeless situation where failure is expected. Wikipedia link: Billy Sunday Tags: informal Related terms: give it one's best shot
    Sense id: en-old_college_try-en-noun-MhIwD8ht Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for old college try meaning in All languages combined (1.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the ambitiousness of college athletes. Earliest known use from 1914. Perhaps popularized by a 1917 sermon of the same name by preacher and professional baseball player Billy Sunday (see citations).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "old college tries",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "old college try"
      },
      "expansion": "old college try (plural old college tries)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1929, Munsey's Magazine, volume 96, number 3, page 355",
          "text": "Those who have seen Ruth make the \"old college try\" understand that some professionals play with a spiritual fervor which is supposed to be the amateur's prerogative.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1980, T. E. Kalem, \"Happy Hangover\" (theatre review of Fifth of July), Time, 17 Nov.",
          "text": "Reeve gives his role the old college try—fervent amateurism."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 April 6, Keith Parsons, “Janzen takes two-shot lead in BellSouth Classic”, in USA Today, retrieved 2009-08-16",
          "text": "You know, all I can do is go out there and give it the old college try and play my hardest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A vigorous, committed attempt or effort, often in the context of a nearly hopeless situation where failure is expected."
      ],
      "id": "en-old_college_try-en-noun-MhIwD8ht",
      "links": [
        [
          "vigorous",
          "vigorous"
        ],
        [
          "committed",
          "committed"
        ],
        [
          "attempt",
          "attempt"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) A vigorous, committed attempt or effort, often in the context of a nearly hopeless situation where failure is expected."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "give it one's best shot"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Billy Sunday"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "old college try"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the ambitiousness of college athletes. Earliest known use from 1914. Perhaps popularized by a 1917 sermon of the same name by preacher and professional baseball player Billy Sunday (see citations).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "old college tries",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "old college try"
      },
      "expansion": "old college try (plural old college tries)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "give it one's best shot"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1929, Munsey's Magazine, volume 96, number 3, page 355",
          "text": "Those who have seen Ruth make the \"old college try\" understand that some professionals play with a spiritual fervor which is supposed to be the amateur's prerogative.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1980, T. E. Kalem, \"Happy Hangover\" (theatre review of Fifth of July), Time, 17 Nov.",
          "text": "Reeve gives his role the old college try—fervent amateurism."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 April 6, Keith Parsons, “Janzen takes two-shot lead in BellSouth Classic”, in USA Today, retrieved 2009-08-16",
          "text": "You know, all I can do is go out there and give it the old college try and play my hardest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A vigorous, committed attempt or effort, often in the context of a nearly hopeless situation where failure is expected."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "vigorous",
          "vigorous"
        ],
        [
          "committed",
          "committed"
        ],
        [
          "attempt",
          "attempt"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) A vigorous, committed attempt or effort, often in the context of a nearly hopeless situation where failure is expected."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Billy Sunday"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "old college try"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.