"alien space bats" meaning in English

See alien space bats in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: ASB [alternative]
Etymology: Coined in the Usenet newsgroup soc.history.what-if. Head templates: {{en-noun|p}} alien space bats pl (plural only)
  1. (fandom slang) An implausible point of divergence from reality, used as a plot device in alternate history. Tags: plural, plural-only, slang Categories (topical): Alternate history, Celestial inhabitants, Plot devices, Stock characters
    Sense id: en-alien_space_bats-en-noun-Ol1BvYK3 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Topics: lifestyle

Alternative forms

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  "etymology_text": "Coined in the Usenet newsgroup soc.history.what-if.",
  "forms": [
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Alternate history",
          "orig": "en:Alternate history",
          "parents": [
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            "Speculative fiction",
            "All topics",
            "Fiction",
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          "source": "w"
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Celestial inhabitants",
          "orig": "en:Celestial inhabitants",
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            "Science fiction",
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            "People",
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          "source": "w"
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          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Plot devices",
          "orig": "en:Plot devices",
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          "name": "Stock characters",
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      "glosses": [
        "An implausible point of divergence from reality, used as a plot device in alternate history."
      ],
      "id": "en-alien_space_bats-en-noun-Ol1BvYK3",
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        "(fandom slang) An implausible point of divergence from reality, used as a plot device in alternate history."
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        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
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  "word": "alien space bats"
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{
  "etymology_text": "Coined in the Usenet newsgroup soc.history.what-if.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "ASB",
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        "An implausible point of divergence from reality, used as a plot device in alternate history."
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      ],
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  "word": "alien space bats"
}

Download raw JSONL data for alien space bats meaning in English (1.1kB)

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  "section": "English",
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  "title": "alien space bats",
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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 2025-04-29 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-20 using wiktextract (4eaa824 and ea19a0a). 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.