See go postal in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From go (“to become”) + postal (“relating to the collection, sorting and delivery of mail”), from a number of incidents, mostly gun violence, perpetrated by disgruntled U.S. Postal Service workers on co-workers in the United States in the mid 1980s.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "goes postal",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "going postal",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "went postal",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "gone postal",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "go<goes,,went,gone> postal"
},
"expansion": "go postal (third-person singular simple present goes postal, present participle going postal, simple past went postal, past participle gone postal)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"go"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "American English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Entries with translation boxes",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with French translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with German translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Hungarian translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Portuguese translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "(to become aggressive and erratic):"
},
{
"text": "(to become very angry):"
},
{
"ref": "1993 December 17, Karl Vick, “Violence at work tied to loss of esteem”, in St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.: The Times Publishing Co., →OCLC, page 4A, column 1:",
"text": "Violence that spills in from the streets may be less worrisome than the worker rampages, to judge by the attentive audience of personnel managers (and the consultants available for hire) at \"A Growing American Phenomenon: Workplace Violence.\" The symposium was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, which has seen so many outbursts that in some circles excessive stress is known as \"going postal.\" Thirty-five people have been killed in 11 post office shootings since 1983.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To become aggressive and erratic, especially due to stress; specifically, to carry out a shooting spree at a workplace environment; also (more generally) to become very angry; to lose one's temper."
],
"id": "en-go_postal-en-verb-ASQ5A9-w",
"links": [
[
"become",
"become"
],
[
"aggressive",
"aggressive"
],
[
"erratic",
"erratic"
],
[
"stress",
"stress#Noun"
],
[
"carry out",
"carry out"
],
[
"shooting spree",
"shooting spree"
],
[
"workplace",
"workplace"
],
[
"environment",
"environment"
],
[
"angry",
"angry"
],
[
"lose one's temper",
"lose one's temper"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To become aggressive and erratic, especially due to stress; specifically, to carry out a shooting spree at a workplace environment; also (more generally) to become very angry; to lose one's temper."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "run amok"
},
{
"word": "lose one's temper"
}
],
"tags": [
"US",
"informal",
"intransitive"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "péter un câble"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"tags": [
"informal"
],
"word": "ausrasten"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "bedilizik"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "bekattan"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "surtar"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡəʊ ˈpəʊstl̩/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡoʊ ˈpoʊstəl/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-us-go postal.oga",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/76/En-us-go_postal.oga/En-us-go_postal.oga.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/En-us-go_postal.oga"
}
],
"word": "go postal"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From go (“to become”) + postal (“relating to the collection, sorting and delivery of mail”), from a number of incidents, mostly gun violence, perpetrated by disgruntled U.S. Postal Service workers on co-workers in the United States in the mid 1980s.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "goes postal",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "going postal",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "went postal",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "gone postal",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "go<goes,,went,gone> postal"
},
"expansion": "go postal (third-person singular simple present goes postal, present participle going postal, simple past went postal, past participle gone postal)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"hyphenation": [
"go"
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"American English",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English informal terms",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Entries with translation boxes",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Terms with French translations",
"Terms with German translations",
"Terms with Hungarian translations",
"Terms with Portuguese translations"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "(to become aggressive and erratic):"
},
{
"text": "(to become very angry):"
},
{
"ref": "1993 December 17, Karl Vick, “Violence at work tied to loss of esteem”, in St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.: The Times Publishing Co., →OCLC, page 4A, column 1:",
"text": "Violence that spills in from the streets may be less worrisome than the worker rampages, to judge by the attentive audience of personnel managers (and the consultants available for hire) at \"A Growing American Phenomenon: Workplace Violence.\" The symposium was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, which has seen so many outbursts that in some circles excessive stress is known as \"going postal.\" Thirty-five people have been killed in 11 post office shootings since 1983.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To become aggressive and erratic, especially due to stress; specifically, to carry out a shooting spree at a workplace environment; also (more generally) to become very angry; to lose one's temper."
],
"links": [
[
"become",
"become"
],
[
"aggressive",
"aggressive"
],
[
"erratic",
"erratic"
],
[
"stress",
"stress#Noun"
],
[
"carry out",
"carry out"
],
[
"shooting spree",
"shooting spree"
],
[
"workplace",
"workplace"
],
[
"environment",
"environment"
],
[
"angry",
"angry"
],
[
"lose one's temper",
"lose one's temper"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, chiefly US, informal) To become aggressive and erratic, especially due to stress; specifically, to carry out a shooting spree at a workplace environment; also (more generally) to become very angry; to lose one's temper."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "run amok"
},
{
"word": "lose one's temper"
}
],
"tags": [
"US",
"informal",
"intransitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡəʊ ˈpəʊstl̩/",
"tags": [
"Received-Pronunciation"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˌɡoʊ ˈpoʊstəl/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
{
"audio": "En-us-go postal.oga",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/76/En-us-go_postal.oga/En-us-go_postal.oga.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/En-us-go_postal.oga"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "péter un câble"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"tags": [
"informal"
],
"word": "ausrasten"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "bedilizik"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "bekattan"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "to become aggressive and erratic",
"word": "surtar"
}
],
"word": "go postal"
}
Download raw JSONL data for go postal meaning in English (3.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.