"Morton's fork" meaning in English

See Morton's fork in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Morton's forks [plural]
Etymology: Said to have originated with the collecting of taxes by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 15th century, who held that a man living modestly must be saving money and could therefore afford taxes, whereas one living extravagantly was obviously rich and could still afford them. Head templates: {{en-noun}} Morton's fork (plural Morton's forks)
  1. A false dilemma in which contradictory arguments lead to the same (unpleasant) conclusion.
    Sense id: en-Morton's_fork-en-noun-CftS2su3 Categories (other): English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 45 55
  2. (bridge) A coup in contract bridge that forces an opponent to choose between letting declarer establish extra tricks in the suit led, or losing the opportunity to win any trick in the suit led. Categories (topical): Bridge
    Sense id: en-Morton's_fork-en-noun-1UhI9kz5 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 45 55 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 45 55 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 45 55 Topics: bridge, games

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Morton's fork meaning in English (2.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Said to have originated with the collecting of taxes by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 15th century, who held that a man living modestly must be saving money and could therefore afford taxes, whereas one living extravagantly was obviously rich and could still afford them.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Morton's forks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Morton's fork (plural Morton's forks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "45 55",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A false dilemma in which contradictory arguments lead to the same (unpleasant) conclusion."
      ],
      "id": "en-Morton's_fork-en-noun-CftS2su3",
      "links": [
        [
          "false dilemma",
          "false dilemma"
        ],
        [
          "contradictory",
          "contradictory"
        ],
        [
          "argument",
          "argument"
        ],
        [
          "conclusion",
          "conclusion"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Bridge",
          "orig": "en:Bridge",
          "parents": [
            "Card games",
            "Games",
            "Recreation",
            "Human activity",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
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          "_dis": "45 55",
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
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        {
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A coup in contract bridge that forces an opponent to choose between letting declarer establish extra tricks in the suit led, or losing the opportunity to win any trick in the suit led."
      ],
      "id": "en-Morton's_fork-en-noun-1UhI9kz5",
      "links": [
        [
          "coup",
          "coup"
        ],
        [
          "contract bridge",
          "contract bridge"
        ],
        [
          "declarer",
          "declarer"
        ],
        [
          "trick",
          "trick"
        ],
        [
          "suit",
          "suit"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(bridge) A coup in contract bridge that forces an opponent to choose between letting declarer establish extra tricks in the suit led, or losing the opportunity to win any trick in the suit led."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "bridge",
        "games"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Morton's fork"
  ],
  "word": "Morton's fork"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
    "English eponyms",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Said to have originated with the collecting of taxes by John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 15th century, who held that a man living modestly must be saving money and could therefore afford taxes, whereas one living extravagantly was obviously rich and could still afford them.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Morton's forks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Morton's fork (plural Morton's forks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "A false dilemma in which contradictory arguments lead to the same (unpleasant) conclusion."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "false dilemma",
          "false dilemma"
        ],
        [
          "contradictory",
          "contradictory"
        ],
        [
          "argument",
          "argument"
        ],
        [
          "conclusion",
          "conclusion"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "en:Bridge"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A coup in contract bridge that forces an opponent to choose between letting declarer establish extra tricks in the suit led, or losing the opportunity to win any trick in the suit led."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "coup",
          "coup"
        ],
        [
          "contract bridge",
          "contract bridge"
        ],
        [
          "declarer",
          "declarer"
        ],
        [
          "trick",
          "trick"
        ],
        [
          "suit",
          "suit"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(bridge) A coup in contract bridge that forces an opponent to choose between letting declarer establish extra tricks in the suit led, or losing the opportunity to win any trick in the suit led."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "bridge",
        "games"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Morton's fork"
  ],
  "word": "Morton's fork"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.