See Lynchian in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "Lynch",
"3": "ian"
},
"expansion": "Lynch + -ian",
"name": "suffix"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Lynch + -ian.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "more Lynchian",
"tags": [
"comparative"
]
},
{
"form": "most Lynchian",
"tags": [
"superlative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "Lynchian (comparative more Lynchian, superlative most Lynchian)",
"name": "en-adj"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms suffixed with -ian",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Entries with translation boxes",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Polish translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Russian translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
37,
45
],
[
184,
192
],
[
368,
376
]
],
"ref": "1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group:",
"text": "But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Potter Stewart-type words that’s definable only ostensively—i.e. we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn’t particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victim’s various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
0,
8
]
],
"ref": "1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Little, Brown Book Group:",
"text": "Lynchian \"refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
45,
53
]
],
"ref": "2006, Slavoj Žižek, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema:",
"text": "My relationship towards tulips is inherently Lynchian. I think they are disgusting. Just imagine. Aren't these some kind of, how do you call it, vagina dentata, dental vaginas threatening to swallow you?",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Of or pertaining to David Keith Lynch (1946–2025), American filmmaker and director whose surrealist films are characterized by dream imagery and meticulous sound design."
],
"id": "en-Lynchian-en-adj-DggIfzjJ",
"links": [
[
"surrealist",
"surrealist"
],
[
"dream",
"dream"
],
[
"sound design",
"sound design"
]
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "of or pertaining to David Lynch",
"word": "lynchiläinen"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "of or pertaining to David Lynch",
"word": "Lynczowski"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "linčevskij",
"sense": "of or pertaining to David Lynch",
"word": "линчевский"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/de/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/de/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav.ogg"
}
],
"word": "Lynchian"
}
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "Lynch",
"3": "ian"
},
"expansion": "Lynch + -ian",
"name": "suffix"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Lynch + -ian.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "more Lynchian",
"tags": [
"comparative"
]
},
{
"form": "most Lynchian",
"tags": [
"superlative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "Lynchian (comparative more Lynchian, superlative most Lynchian)",
"name": "en-adj"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English adjectives",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English eponyms",
"English lemmas",
"English terms suffixed with -ian",
"English terms with quotations",
"Entries with translation boxes",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Terms with Finnish translations",
"Terms with Polish translations",
"Terms with Russian translations"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
37,
45
],
[
184,
192
],
[
368,
376
]
],
"ref": "1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group:",
"text": "But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Potter Stewart-type words that’s definable only ostensively—i.e. we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn’t particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victim’s various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
0,
8
]
],
"ref": "1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Little, Brown Book Group:",
"text": "Lynchian \"refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
45,
53
]
],
"ref": "2006, Slavoj Žižek, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema:",
"text": "My relationship towards tulips is inherently Lynchian. I think they are disgusting. Just imagine. Aren't these some kind of, how do you call it, vagina dentata, dental vaginas threatening to swallow you?",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Of or pertaining to David Keith Lynch (1946–2025), American filmmaker and director whose surrealist films are characterized by dream imagery and meticulous sound design."
],
"links": [
[
"surrealist",
"surrealist"
],
[
"dream",
"dream"
],
[
"sound design",
"sound design"
]
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/de/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/de/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-Lynchian.wav.ogg"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "of or pertaining to David Lynch",
"word": "lynchiläinen"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "of or pertaining to David Lynch",
"word": "Lynczowski"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "linčevskij",
"sense": "of or pertaining to David Lynch",
"word": "линчевский"
}
],
"word": "Lynchian"
}
Download raw JSONL data for Lynchian meaning in English (3.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-04-13 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-03 using wiktextract (aeaf2a1 and fb63907). 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.