"a bridge too far" meaning in English

See a bridge too far in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-a bridge too far.ogg
Etymology: In reference to Operation Market Garden, Allied airborne military operation of 1944. General Roy E. Urquhart, in his 1958 memoir Arnhem, ascribed the phrase to general Frederick “Boy” Browning. It was popularized by being chosen as the title of Cornelius Ryan’s 1974 book on Operation Market Garden and the subsequent 1977 epic war film. Head templates: {{head|en|noun}} a bridge too far
  1. (idiomatic) A step or action that is too ambitious; an act of overreaching. Wikipedia link: A Bridge Too Far (book), A Bridge Too Far (film), Cornelius Ryan, Frederick Browning, Operation Market Garden, Roy Urquhart Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): World War II
    Sense id: en-a_bridge_too_far-en-noun-c9~w5FMb Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
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        {
          "ref": "2006, Adair Broughton, Crossing the Bridge of Infinity, page 40:",
          "text": "Cloning was an interesting concept. Cloning body parts was again just man's search for immortality riding on the back of naive altruistic medicinal benevolence. But cloning a person was a bridge too far.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 April 28, Zachary Small, quoting William Goetzmann, “As Auctioneers and Artists Rush Into NFTs, Many Collectors Stay Away”, in New York Times:",
          "text": "“Maybe we are seeing a similar phenomenon with NFTs — but it could be a bridge too far for people with collections in other media.”",
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        "A step or action that is too ambitious; an act of overreaching."
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          "overreaching",
          "overreaching"
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        "(idiomatic) A step or action that is too ambitious; an act of overreaching."
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          "ref": "2021 April 28, Zachary Small, quoting William Goetzmann, “As Auctioneers and Artists Rush Into NFTs, Many Collectors Stay Away”, in New York Times:",
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        "A step or action that is too ambitious; an act of overreaching."
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        "(idiomatic) A step or action that is too ambitious; an act of overreaching."
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Download raw JSONL data for a bridge too far meaning in English (2.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.