"booby prize" meaning in English

See booby prize in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-booby prize.ogg [Australia] Forms: booby prizes [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} booby prize (plural booby prizes)
  1. (idiomatic) A prize or status, often unwelcome, awarded as a joke or disincentive to the loser of a contest or for poor performance. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: wooden spoon Translations (a prize awarded for poor performance): poedelprijs [masculine] (Dutch), lohdutuspalkinto (Finnish), prix parodique [masculine] (French), skammarverðlaun [neuter, plural] (Icelandic), premio limón (Spanish), รางวัลยอดแย่ (Thai)

Inflected forms

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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "booby prizes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {},
      "expansion": "booby prize (plural booby prizes)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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          "name": "Terms with Icelandic translations",
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        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Spanish translations",
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Thai translations",
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        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              74,
              85
            ]
          ],
          "text": "At the end of the conference, they awarded him with a rubber chicken as a booby prize for complaining the loudest.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              36,
              48
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2025 June 25, “Network News: Network Rail to pay compensation for Oxford Botley Road delays”, in RAIL, number 1038, page 9:",
          "text": "\"Network Rail needs to take all the booby prizes going, for a ham-fisted, over-budget, over-time infrastructure project,\" local activist John Mair told RAIL.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A prize or status, often unwelcome, awarded as a joke or disincentive to the loser of a contest or for poor performance."
      ],
      "id": "en-booby_prize-en-noun-lZ0CW9-~",
      "links": [
        [
          "prize",
          "prize"
        ],
        [
          "status",
          "status"
        ],
        [
          "joke",
          "joke"
        ],
        [
          "disincentive",
          "disincentive"
        ],
        [
          "loser",
          "loser"
        ],
        [
          "contest",
          "contest"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A prize or status, often unwelcome, awarded as a joke or disincentive to the loser of a contest or for poor performance."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "wooden spoon"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "lang_code": "nl",
          "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "poedelprijs"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "lang_code": "fi",
          "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
          "word": "lohdutuspalkinto"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "lang_code": "fr",
          "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "prix parodique"
        },
        {
          "code": "is",
          "lang": "Icelandic",
          "lang_code": "is",
          "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
          "tags": [
            "neuter",
            "plural"
          ],
          "word": "skammarverðlaun"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "lang_code": "es",
          "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
          "word": "premio limón"
        },
        {
          "code": "th",
          "lang": "Thai",
          "lang_code": "th",
          "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
          "word": "รางวัลยอดแย่"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-booby prize.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/1d/En-au-booby_prize.ogg/En-au-booby_prize.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/En-au-booby_prize.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "booby prize"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "booby prizes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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  ],
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "wooden spoon"
    }
  ],
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        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Dutch translations",
        "Terms with Finnish translations",
        "Terms with French translations",
        "Terms with Icelandic translations",
        "Terms with Spanish translations",
        "Terms with Thai translations"
      ],
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          ],
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          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              36,
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            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2025 June 25, “Network News: Network Rail to pay compensation for Oxford Botley Road delays”, in RAIL, number 1038, page 9:",
          "text": "\"Network Rail needs to take all the booby prizes going, for a ham-fisted, over-budget, over-time infrastructure project,\" local activist John Mair told RAIL.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A prize or status, often unwelcome, awarded as a joke or disincentive to the loser of a contest or for poor performance."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "prize",
          "prize"
        ],
        [
          "status",
          "status"
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        [
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        ],
        [
          "disincentive",
          "disincentive"
        ],
        [
          "loser",
          "loser"
        ],
        [
          "contest",
          "contest"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A prize or status, often unwelcome, awarded as a joke or disincentive to the loser of a contest or for poor performance."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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      "tags": [
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  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "lang_code": "nl",
      "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "poedelprijs"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "lang_code": "fi",
      "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
      "word": "lohdutuspalkinto"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "lang_code": "fr",
      "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "prix parodique"
    },
    {
      "code": "is",
      "lang": "Icelandic",
      "lang_code": "is",
      "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
      "tags": [
        "neuter",
        "plural"
      ],
      "word": "skammarverðlaun"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "lang_code": "es",
      "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
      "word": "premio limón"
    },
    {
      "code": "th",
      "lang": "Thai",
      "lang_code": "th",
      "sense": "a prize awarded for poor performance",
      "word": "รางวัลยอดแย่"
    }
  ],
  "word": "booby prize"
}

Download raw JSONL data for booby prize meaning in English (2.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). 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.