"eggs in moonshine" meaning in English

See eggs in moonshine in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-eggs in moonshine.wav
Etymology: Probably from the name of a dish, referred to in 16th- and 17th-century English cookbooks, made of egg yolks lightly poached in sweetened rosewater. See also moonshine, culinary sense (US). https://web.archive.org/web/20160721010231/http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/eggsinmoonshine.htm Head templates: {{en-noun|p|head=eggs in moonshine}} eggs in moonshine pl (plural only)
  1. (idiomatic) A fanciful notion; an unrealistic or ludicrous concept. Tags: idiomatic, plural, plural-only Synonyms: pie in the sky
    Sense id: en-eggs_in_moonshine-en-noun-Dfkz588W Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
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          "ref": "1593, Gabriel Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation, or, A New Praise of the Old Ass:",
          "text": "You may discourse of Hermes' ascending spirit, of Orpheus' enchanting harp, of Homer's divine fury, of Tyrtaeus' enraging trumpet, of Pericles' bouncing thunderclaps, of Plato's enthusiastical ravishment, and I wot not what marvellous eggs in moonshine: but a fly for all your flying speculations when one good-fellow with his odd jests, or one mad knave with his awk hibber-gibber, is able to put down twenty of your smuggest artificial men, that simper it so nicely and coyly in their curious points.",
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          "ref": "1951, C. S. Lewis, chapter 7, in Prince Caspian, Collins, published 1998:",
          "text": "[…] your Majesty knows I think the Horn—and that bit of broken stone over there—and your great King Peter—and your Lion Aslan—are all eggs in moonshine.",
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        "(idiomatic) A fanciful notion; an unrealistic or ludicrous concept."
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "pie in the sky"
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  "word": "eggs in moonshine"
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Download raw JSONL data for eggs in moonshine meaning in English (2.6kB)

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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 2025-04-29 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-04-20 using wiktextract (4eaa824 and ea19a0a). 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.