"better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" meaning in English

See better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick
  1. (humorous) Better than nothing; not unsatisfactory but also not a reason for enthusiastic excitement. Tags: humorous Synonyms: better than a kick in the teeth, better than a poke in the eye, better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick, better than a poke in the eye with a shitty stick, better than a poke in the eye with a rusty nail Translations (better than nothing): meglio di un pugno in un occhio (Italian)
    Sense id: en-better_than_a_poke_in_the_eye_with_a_sharp_stick-en-phrase-LH2b6T2q Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English positive polarity items

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick meaning in English (2.0kB)

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  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
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      "expansion": "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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            "Terms by semantic function"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1994 October 7, Todd S. Purdum, “The 1994 Campaign: After Wary Weeks, Dinkins Announces Support for Cuomo”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-09-13",
          "text": "Mr. Cuomo described the Dinkins endorsement as politically significant, but it is unclear just how much it matters. . . . \"Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,\" to borrow one of the former Mayor's favorite maxims.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Better than nothing; not unsatisfactory but also not a reason for enthusiastic excitement."
      ],
      "id": "en-better_than_a_poke_in_the_eye_with_a_sharp_stick-en-phrase-LH2b6T2q",
      "links": [
        [
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        ],
        [
          "Better than nothing",
          "better than nothing#English"
        ],
        [
          "unsatisfactory",
          "unsatisfactory#English"
        ],
        [
          "enthusiastic",
          "enthusiastic#English"
        ],
        [
          "excitement",
          "excitement#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) Better than nothing; not unsatisfactory but also not a reason for enthusiastic excitement."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "better than a kick in the teeth"
        },
        {
          "word": "better than a poke in the eye"
        },
        {
          "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick"
        },
        {
          "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a shitty stick"
        },
        {
          "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a rusty nail"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "better than nothing",
          "word": "meglio di un pugno in un occhio"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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      "expansion": "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1994 October 7, Todd S. Purdum, “The 1994 Campaign: After Wary Weeks, Dinkins Announces Support for Cuomo”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-09-13",
          "text": "Mr. Cuomo described the Dinkins endorsement as politically significant, but it is unclear just how much it matters. . . . \"Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,\" to borrow one of the former Mayor's favorite maxims.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Better than nothing; not unsatisfactory but also not a reason for enthusiastic excitement."
      ],
      "links": [
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        [
          "Better than nothing",
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) Better than nothing; not unsatisfactory but also not a reason for enthusiastic excitement."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "better than a kick in the teeth"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "better than a poke in the eye"
    },
    {
      "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick"
    },
    {
      "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a shitty stick"
    },
    {
      "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a rusty nail"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "better than nothing",
      "word": "meglio di un pugno in un occhio"
    }
  ],
  "word": "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c 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.