"drop a bombshell" meaning in English

See drop a bombshell in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-drop a bombshell.ogg [Australia] Forms: drops a bombshell [present, singular, third-person], dropping a bombshell [participle, present], dropped a bombshell [participle, past], dropped a bombshell [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} drop a bombshell (third-person singular simple present drops a bombshell, present participle dropping a bombshell, simple past and past participle dropped a bombshell)
  1. (idiomatic) To announce surprising or alarming information suddenly and without warning. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-drop_a_bombshell-en-verb-zVUBY2o6 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 14 43 43
  2. 2009, Marion Brown III, The Worst Part of Me, page 116:
    Sense id: en-drop_a_bombshell-en-verb-qcSbqlnJ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 14 43 43
  3. 2009, Marion Brown III, The Worst Part of Me, page 116:
    Sense id: en-drop_a_bombshell-en-verb-6wxfLfXY Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 14 43 43

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for drop a bombshell meaning in English (3.7kB)

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  "forms": [
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      "form": "drops a bombshell",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "dropping a bombshell",
      "tags": [
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    {
      "form": "dropped a bombshell",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2000, Dan McCaffery, Tommy Burns: Canada's Unknown World Heavyweight Champion, page 135",
          "text": "When the two men got together to discuss contract arrangements, the challenger dropped a bombshell.\n\"If you lie down you can have the whole purse — $10,000,\" O'Brien told him.²³",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Lisa Hickey, Design Secrets: Advertising: 50 Real-Life Projects Uncovered, page 64",
          "text": "John and Rick were knee-deep in pre-production when the client dropped a bombshell: Both of the tax services spots had been killed, but they still needed to air something in the same time frame.",
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        "To announce surprising or alarming information suddenly and without warning."
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      "id": "en-drop_a_bombshell-en-verb-zVUBY2o6",
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        "(idiomatic) To announce surprising or alarming information suddenly and without warning."
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        "2009, Marion Brown III, The Worst Part of Me, page 116"
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        "Asia dropped a piece of paper on my desk and walked out the door with a huge smile on her face.[…]How could Asia just come in and drop a bombshell and then walk out like there was nothing to it?"
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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 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.