"disaster waiting to happen" meaning in English

See disaster waiting to happen in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: disasters waiting to happen [plural]
Etymology: Attested 1940s, apparently modeled after accident waiting to happen. Etymology templates: {{m|en|accident waiting to happen}} accident waiting to happen Head templates: {{en-noun|disasters waiting to happen}} disaster waiting to happen (plural disasters waiting to happen)
  1. Something potentially very dangerous or likely to fail.
    Sense id: en-disaster_waiting_to_happen-en-noun-T54VQc1j Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for disaster waiting to happen meaning in English (1.0kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "accident waiting to happen"
      },
      "expansion": "accident waiting to happen",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Attested 1940s, apparently modeled after accident waiting to happen.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "disasters waiting to happen",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "disasters waiting to happen"
      },
      "expansion": "disaster waiting to happen (plural disasters waiting to happen)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something potentially very dangerous or likely to fail."
      ],
      "id": "en-disaster_waiting_to_happen-en-noun-T54VQc1j",
      "links": [
        [
          "potentially",
          "potentially"
        ],
        [
          "dangerous",
          "dangerous"
        ],
        [
          "fail",
          "fail"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "disaster waiting to happen"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "accident waiting to happen"
      },
      "expansion": "accident waiting to happen",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Attested 1940s, apparently modeled after accident waiting to happen.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "disasters waiting to happen",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "disasters waiting to happen"
      },
      "expansion": "disaster waiting to happen (plural disasters waiting to happen)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something potentially very dangerous or likely to fail."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "potentially",
          "potentially"
        ],
        [
          "dangerous",
          "dangerous"
        ],
        [
          "fail",
          "fail"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "disaster waiting to happen"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 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.