"cowabunga" meaning in English

See cowabunga in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Interjection

IPA: /ˌkæɔəˈbaŋɡə/ [General-Australian], /ˌkaʊəˈbʌŋɡə/ [UK], /ˌkaʊəˈbʌŋɡə/ [General-American] Audio: En-au-cowabunga.ogg [Australia]
enPR: kou'ə-bŭngʹə Etymology: Unknown, but was popularized (as Kowa-Bunga) by Chief Thunderthud on the American children's show Howdy Doody in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and became associated with American surfing culture. By the early 1980s, it was used as the catch-phrase of Cookie Monster on the American television show Sesame Street, and gained popularity with a broader audience after its use in the American cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (For further treatment, see here.) Etymology templates: {{unknown|en}} Unknown, {{m|en|Kowa-Bunga}} Kowa-Bunga Head templates: {{en-interj}} cowabunga
  1. (slang, originally US, usually humorous) Expressing amazement, enthusiasm, or joy. Wikipedia link: Cookie Monster, Howdy Doody, surfing culture Tags: humorous, slang, usually Categories (topical): Surfing, The Simpsons Synonyms: Kowa-Bunga, cowabonga, kawabonga, kowabonga, kowabunga Synonyms (expressing amazement): wow Synonyms (expressing exuberant approval): yay

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for cowabunga meaning in English (3.6kB)

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          "text": "Cowabunga, dude!"
        }
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      "ipa": "/ˌkaʊəˈbʌŋɡə/",
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      "sense": "expressing exuberant approval",
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    {
      "word": "Kowa-Bunga"
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    {
      "word": "cowabonga"
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      "word": "kawabonga"
    },
    {
      "word": "kowabonga"
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    {
      "word": "kowabunga"
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  "word": "cowabunga"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-24 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (82c8ff9 and f4967a5). 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.