"Mexican standoff" meaning in English

See Mexican standoff in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-Mexican standoff.ogg Forms: Mexican standoffs [plural]
Etymology: 1876 US. Three-way gun standoffs, popularized in spaghetti westerns such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), have come to be called Mexican standoffs, though this usage appears to date to the 1990s, notably in reference to Reservoir Dogs (1992); earlier usage refers to this as a “three-way standoff” or “triangular standoff”. Head templates: {{en-noun}} Mexican standoff (plural Mexican standoffs)
  1. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.
    (slang) An inconclusive standoff, ending in mutual retreat.
    Tags: slang
    Sense id: en-Mexican_standoff-en-noun-Hvj~g~Pe Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 18 15 15 15 15 23 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 19 15 15 15 15 21 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 19 15 15 15 15 20
  2. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.
    (slang) A confrontation among two or more armed parties, none of which wants to attack first (fearing that the other could retaliate), but neither of which will disarm (for fear the other will attack).
    Tags: slang
    Sense id: en-Mexican_standoff-en-noun-1x91X1y0 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 18 15 15 15 15 23 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 19 15 15 15 15 21 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 19 15 15 15 15 20
  3. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.
    (slang) A three-way or more standoff.
    Tags: slang
    Sense id: en-Mexican_standoff-en-noun-zKWzHj7J Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 18 15 15 15 15 23 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 19 15 15 15 15 21 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 19 15 15 15 15 20
  4. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.
    (slang, poker) A pot that is split among the players because of a tie.
    Tags: slang Categories (topical): Poker
    Sense id: en-Mexican_standoff-en-noun-jcwL6HMJ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 18 15 15 15 15 23 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 19 15 15 15 15 21 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 19 15 15 15 15 20 Topics: card-games, poker
  5. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win. Tags: slang
    Sense id: en-Mexican_standoff-en-noun-Eyn9UuYt Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 18 15 15 15 15 23 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 19 15 15 15 15 21 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 19 15 15 15 15 20
  6. (rail transport) A near-collision between two trains; an averted cornfield meet. Categories (topical): Rail transportation
    Sense id: en-Mexican_standoff-en-noun-Uzy6tD8H Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 18 15 15 15 15 23 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 19 15 15 15 15 21 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 19 15 15 15 15 20 Topics: rail-transport, railways, transport
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: circular firing squad

Inflected forms

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Download raw JSONL data for Mexican standoff meaning in English (5.0kB)

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-18 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (e4a2c88 and 4230888). 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.