"Keystone Cop" meaning in English

See Keystone Cop in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Keystone Cops [plural]
Etymology: From the Keystone Cops, a group of fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent slapstick comedies produced by the Keystone Film Company (itself named for the "Keystone State": Pennsylvania) between 1912 and 1917. Head templates: {{en-noun|head=Keystone Cop}} Keystone Cop (plural Keystone Cops)
  1. (informal) A bungling, incompetent policeman. Wikipedia link: Keystone Cops Tags: informal Synonyms: Keystone Kop
    Sense id: en-Keystone_Cop-en-noun-8EufI-3D Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for Keystone Cop meaning in English (1.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the Keystone Cops, a group of fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent slapstick comedies produced by the Keystone Film Company (itself named for the \"Keystone State\": Pennsylvania) between 1912 and 1917.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Keystone Cops",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "Keystone Cop"
      },
      "expansion": "Keystone Cop (plural Keystone Cops)",
      "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": "2003, Colin Evans, A Question of Evidence, page 162",
          "text": "Every blunder added weight to defense depictions of the CID as a bunch of Keystone Kops bunglers, a disgrace to serious criminal investigation.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, T. L. Carpenter, The Amerikan Dream, page 174",
          "text": "“I'm gone three days and look what happens? You two get sent out to do some spying and end up with front-row seats at a Keystone Kop shoot-out.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A bungling, incompetent policeman."
      ],
      "id": "en-Keystone_Cop-en-noun-8EufI-3D",
      "links": [
        [
          "bungling",
          "bungling"
        ],
        [
          "incompetent",
          "incompetent"
        ],
        [
          "policeman",
          "policeman"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) A bungling, incompetent policeman."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "Keystone Kop"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Keystone Cops"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Keystone Cop"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the Keystone Cops, a group of fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent slapstick comedies produced by the Keystone Film Company (itself named for the \"Keystone State\": Pennsylvania) between 1912 and 1917.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Keystone Cops",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "Keystone Cop"
      },
      "expansion": "Keystone Cop (plural Keystone Cops)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "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",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2003, Colin Evans, A Question of Evidence, page 162",
          "text": "Every blunder added weight to defense depictions of the CID as a bunch of Keystone Kops bunglers, a disgrace to serious criminal investigation.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, T. L. Carpenter, The Amerikan Dream, page 174",
          "text": "“I'm gone three days and look what happens? You two get sent out to do some spying and end up with front-row seats at a Keystone Kop shoot-out.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A bungling, incompetent policeman."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "bungling",
          "bungling"
        ],
        [
          "incompetent",
          "incompetent"
        ],
        [
          "policeman",
          "policeman"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) A bungling, incompetent policeman."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Keystone Cops"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "Keystone Kop"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Keystone Cop"
}

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.