See 800-pound gorilla in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for 800-pound gorilla meaning in English (3.4kB)
{
"etymology_text": "Attested since at least 1971, from a riddle: \"Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep?\" / \"Anywhere it wants.\"",
"forms": [
{
"form": "800-pound gorillas",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "800-pound gorilla"
},
"expansion": "800-pound gorilla (plural 800-pound gorillas)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "48 52",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2008 February 6, “Who’s the 800-Pound Gorilla?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "When it comes to the lucrative search market, Google, not Microsoft, is the 800-pound gorilla.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014 February 26, Eddie Gossage, quotee, “Bernie Ecclestone dismisses Nascar objection to US Grand Prix date clash”, in The Guardian",
"text": "The thing he unfortunately doesn't recognise is there is an 800-pound gorilla when it comes to major American motor sports. The 800-pound gorilla is Nascar.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2016 May 31, James Poniewozik, “Trump, 800-Pound Media Gorilla, Pounds His Chest at Reporters”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "It was poetically fitting. For almost a year, Mr. Trump has been the 800-pound gorilla whose unpredictable rampages have obsessed the news media. Now he was completing the circle by commenting on the 400-pound gorilla who briefly stole the spotlight from him for one holiday weekend.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021, Jeroen Janssens, chapter 10, in Data Science at the Command Line, 2nd edition, O'Reilly",
"text": "Apache Spark is a cluster-computing framework. It’s the 800-pound gorilla you turn to when it’s impossible to fit your data in memory.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An entity that dominates its environment."
],
"id": "en-800-pound_gorilla-en-noun-8EsGwsl6",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) An entity that dominates its environment."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "48 52",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"derived": [
{
"_dis1": "44 56",
"word": "800-pound gorilla in the room"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2018 March 13, Jessica Glenza, “Sky-high prices of everything make US healthcare the world's most expensive”, in The Guardian",
"text": "However, a co-author of the new study said those arguments ignore the “800-pound gorilla”: sky-high prices everywhere.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something dangerous, menacing, or frightening that is obvious but not addressed."
],
"id": "en-800-pound_gorilla-en-noun-rFPkpFeF",
"links": [
[
"dangerous",
"dangerous"
],
[
"address",
"address"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Something dangerous, menacing, or frightening that is obvious but not addressed."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "elephant in the room"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-800-pound gorilla.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/03/En-au-800-pound_gorilla.ogg/En-au-800-pound_gorilla.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/En-au-800-pound_gorilla.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "800-pound gorilla"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms spelled with numbers",
"English terms with audio links"
],
"derived": [
{
"word": "800-pound gorilla in the room"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Attested since at least 1971, from a riddle: \"Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep?\" / \"Anywhere it wants.\"",
"forms": [
{
"form": "800-pound gorillas",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "800-pound gorilla"
},
"expansion": "800-pound gorilla (plural 800-pound gorillas)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2008 February 6, “Who’s the 800-Pound Gorilla?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "When it comes to the lucrative search market, Google, not Microsoft, is the 800-pound gorilla.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014 February 26, Eddie Gossage, quotee, “Bernie Ecclestone dismisses Nascar objection to US Grand Prix date clash”, in The Guardian",
"text": "The thing he unfortunately doesn't recognise is there is an 800-pound gorilla when it comes to major American motor sports. The 800-pound gorilla is Nascar.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2016 May 31, James Poniewozik, “Trump, 800-Pound Media Gorilla, Pounds His Chest at Reporters”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "It was poetically fitting. For almost a year, Mr. Trump has been the 800-pound gorilla whose unpredictable rampages have obsessed the news media. Now he was completing the circle by commenting on the 400-pound gorilla who briefly stole the spotlight from him for one holiday weekend.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2021, Jeroen Janssens, chapter 10, in Data Science at the Command Line, 2nd edition, O'Reilly",
"text": "Apache Spark is a cluster-computing framework. It’s the 800-pound gorilla you turn to when it’s impossible to fit your data in memory.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An entity that dominates its environment."
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) An entity that dominates its environment."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2018 March 13, Jessica Glenza, “Sky-high prices of everything make US healthcare the world's most expensive”, in The Guardian",
"text": "However, a co-author of the new study said those arguments ignore the “800-pound gorilla”: sky-high prices everywhere.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something dangerous, menacing, or frightening that is obvious but not addressed."
],
"links": [
[
"dangerous",
"dangerous"
],
[
"address",
"address"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Something dangerous, menacing, or frightening that is obvious but not addressed."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "elephant in the room"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-800-pound gorilla.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/03/En-au-800-pound_gorilla.ogg/En-au-800-pound_gorilla.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/En-au-800-pound_gorilla.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "800-pound gorilla"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.
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