"world's smallest violin" meaning in All languages combined

See world's smallest violin on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Etymology: A version of Hearts and Flowers on violin was used in many melodramatic films in the early 1900s. From this and the use of other violin pieces in melodramatic films derive the term hearts and flowers (“extremely sentimental and sweet”), the phrase break out the violins (in a dismissive/sarcastic show of sympathy), and the image of a violin (small, to reflect that the woe complained of is perceived to be small) playing Hearts and Flowers or "the world's saddest song" in response to complaints of woe. Etymology templates: {{m|en|hearts and flowers||extremely sentimental and sweet}} hearts and flowers (“extremely sentimental and sweet”) Head templates: {{en-noun|?}} world's smallest violin
  1. (humorous) A notional violin that plays tragic music for the afflicted; used in dismissive responses to complaints of woe. Wikipedia link: Hearts and Flowers Tags: humorous Related terms: sad trombone
    Sense id: en-world's_smallest_violin-en-noun-9FQUbLV1 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for world's smallest violin meaning in All languages combined (3.3kB)

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      "expansion": "hearts and flowers (“extremely sentimental and sweet”)",
      "name": "m"
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  "etymology_text": "A version of Hearts and Flowers on violin was used in many melodramatic films in the early 1900s. From this and the use of other violin pieces in melodramatic films derive the term hearts and flowers (“extremely sentimental and sweet”), the phrase break out the violins (in a dismissive/sarcastic show of sympathy), and the image of a violin (small, to reflect that the woe complained of is perceived to be small) playing Hearts and Flowers or \"the world's saddest song\" in response to complaints of woe.",
  "head_templates": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002, “Squilliam Returns”, in SpongeBob SquarePants, season 3, episode 48b, spoken by Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown)",
          "text": "Ohh, boo-hoo! Let me play a sad song for you on the world's smallest violin.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Joseph P. Natoli, This is a picture and not the world: movies and a post-9/11 America, page 109",
          "text": "The world's smallest violin playing hearts and flowers for every sweetheart of the Midwest who didn't make it in Hollywood.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Patsy Clairmont, I Second That Emotion: Untangling Our Zany Feelings",
          "text": "He stretches out his arm and then rubs his thumb and forefinger together as if he is playing the world's smallest violin for the world's largest whiner. How rude is that?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Geo Gosling, TBI Purgatory: Comes After Being in TBI Hell, page 102",
          "text": "Even someone upset about something as serious and awful as cancer wasn't safe from my world's smallest violin. Well, you have cancer. That sucks but cancer has been beaten.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021, “World’s Smallest Violin”, in OK Orchestra, performed by AJR",
          "text": "The world's smallest violin / Really needs an audience / So if I do not find somebody soon (That's right, that's right) / I'll blow up into smithereens",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023, Aubrey Allegretti, The Guardian, 09 Aug 2023, I The outdated Commons culture will endure unless parties work together",
          "text": "“We are privileged to have this job – but also face some uniquely terrible employment practices. You can’t talk openly about them without feeling it’s like getting out the world’s smallest violin,” sighed one MP.",
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        "(humorous) A notional violin that plays tragic music for the afflicted; used in dismissive responses to complaints of woe."
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
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        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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          "ref": "2002, “Squilliam Returns”, in SpongeBob SquarePants, season 3, episode 48b, spoken by Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown)",
          "text": "Ohh, boo-hoo! Let me play a sad song for you on the world's smallest violin.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Joseph P. Natoli, This is a picture and not the world: movies and a post-9/11 America, page 109",
          "text": "The world's smallest violin playing hearts and flowers for every sweetheart of the Midwest who didn't make it in Hollywood.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Patsy Clairmont, I Second That Emotion: Untangling Our Zany Feelings",
          "text": "He stretches out his arm and then rubs his thumb and forefinger together as if he is playing the world's smallest violin for the world's largest whiner. How rude is that?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Geo Gosling, TBI Purgatory: Comes After Being in TBI Hell, page 102",
          "text": "Even someone upset about something as serious and awful as cancer wasn't safe from my world's smallest violin. Well, you have cancer. That sucks but cancer has been beaten.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021, “World’s Smallest Violin”, in OK Orchestra, performed by AJR",
          "text": "The world's smallest violin / Really needs an audience / So if I do not find somebody soon (That's right, that's right) / I'll blow up into smithereens",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023, Aubrey Allegretti, The Guardian, 09 Aug 2023, I The outdated Commons culture will endure unless parties work together",
          "text": "“We are privileged to have this job – but also face some uniquely terrible employment practices. You can’t talk openly about them without feeling it’s like getting out the world’s smallest violin,” sighed one MP.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "(humorous) A notional violin that plays tragic music for the afflicted; used in dismissive responses to complaints of woe."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (4d5d0bb and edd475d). 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.