"Alibi Ike" meaning in English

See Alibi Ike in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Alibi Ikes [plural]
Etymology: From the principal character in "Alibi Ike" (1915), a short story by Ring Lardner Sr., and a subsequent film (1935) of the same name. Head templates: {{en-noun|head=Alibi Ike}} Alibi Ike (plural Alibi Ikes)
  1. (informal) One who is always ready to provide excuses for shortcomings, errors, or other difficulties. Tags: informal Categories (topical): People, Personality Synonyms: apologist Related terms: Dapper Dan, doubting Thomas, Gentleman Jim, gloomy Gus, good-time Charlie, nervous Nellie, plain Jane, Silent Sam

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Alibi Ike meaning in English (2.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the principal character in \"Alibi Ike\" (1915), a short story by Ring Lardner Sr., and a subsequent film (1935) of the same name.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Alibi Ikes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "Alibi Ike"
      },
      "expansion": "Alibi Ike (plural Alibi Ikes)",
      "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"
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          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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        },
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          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Personality",
          "orig": "en:Personality",
          "parents": [
            "Mind",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002, Jerome Alexander, 160 Degrees of Deviation: The Case for the Corporate Cynic, page 28",
          "text": "Many times I have heard the \"alibi Ike's\" and apologists brush off complaints and ignore behaviors because the deviator in question is too critical, too important, too tenured, or too something!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Frank Deford, Bliss, Remembered: A Novel",
          "text": "Now, I'm no Alibi Ike, Teddy, but I think that was my downfall.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 June 6, HarryRPitts, comment on \"Benghazi, Bowe Bergdahl, and manufactured brouhaha\" by Andrew Bacevich, Boston Globe (retrieved 10 July 2014)",
          "text": "There's no foulup so lame that keepers of the flame like Andrew Bacevich, the modern Alibi Ike, can't excuse, spin and downplay."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who is always ready to provide excuses for shortcomings, errors, or other difficulties."
      ],
      "id": "en-Alibi_Ike-en-noun-B8NZZpv2",
      "links": [
        [
          "excuse",
          "excuse"
        ],
        [
          "shortcoming",
          "shortcoming"
        ],
        [
          "error",
          "error"
        ],
        [
          "difficulties",
          "difficulty"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) One who is always ready to provide excuses for shortcomings, errors, or other difficulties."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Dapper Dan"
        },
        {
          "word": "doubting Thomas"
        },
        {
          "word": "Gentleman Jim"
        },
        {
          "word": "gloomy Gus"
        },
        {
          "word": "good-time Charlie"
        },
        {
          "word": "nervous Nellie"
        },
        {
          "word": "plain Jane"
        },
        {
          "word": "Silent Sam"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "apologist"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Alibi Ike"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the principal character in \"Alibi Ike\" (1915), a short story by Ring Lardner Sr., and a subsequent film (1935) of the same name.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Alibi Ikes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "Alibi Ike"
      },
      "expansion": "Alibi Ike (plural Alibi Ikes)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Dapper Dan"
    },
    {
      "word": "doubting Thomas"
    },
    {
      "word": "Gentleman Jim"
    },
    {
      "word": "gloomy Gus"
    },
    {
      "word": "good-time Charlie"
    },
    {
      "word": "nervous Nellie"
    },
    {
      "word": "plain Jane"
    },
    {
      "word": "Silent Sam"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English eponyms",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:People",
        "en:Personality"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002, Jerome Alexander, 160 Degrees of Deviation: The Case for the Corporate Cynic, page 28",
          "text": "Many times I have heard the \"alibi Ike's\" and apologists brush off complaints and ignore behaviors because the deviator in question is too critical, too important, too tenured, or too something!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Frank Deford, Bliss, Remembered: A Novel",
          "text": "Now, I'm no Alibi Ike, Teddy, but I think that was my downfall.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 June 6, HarryRPitts, comment on \"Benghazi, Bowe Bergdahl, and manufactured brouhaha\" by Andrew Bacevich, Boston Globe (retrieved 10 July 2014)",
          "text": "There's no foulup so lame that keepers of the flame like Andrew Bacevich, the modern Alibi Ike, can't excuse, spin and downplay."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who is always ready to provide excuses for shortcomings, errors, or other difficulties."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "excuse",
          "excuse"
        ],
        [
          "shortcoming",
          "shortcoming"
        ],
        [
          "error",
          "error"
        ],
        [
          "difficulties",
          "difficulty"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) One who is always ready to provide excuses for shortcomings, errors, or other difficulties."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "apologist"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Alibi Ike"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). 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.