"golden ticket" meaning in English

See golden ticket in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-golden ticket.ogg [Australia] Forms: golden tickets [plural]
Etymology: From golden + ticket; from golden referring to something valuable or desirable and ticket as something necessary for obtaining something. Popularized by the winning tickets in Roald Dahl's 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|golden|ticket}} golden + ticket Head templates: {{en-noun}} golden ticket (plural golden tickets)
  1. (idiomatic) A qualification, person or thing that can provide positive opportunities. Wikipedia link: Roald Dahl Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-golden_ticket-en-noun-V1LczBzl Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for golden ticket meaning in English (2.2kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "golden",
        "3": "ticket"
      },
      "expansion": "golden + ticket",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From golden + ticket; from golden referring to something valuable or desirable and ticket as something necessary for obtaining something. Popularized by the winning tickets in Roald Dahl's 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "golden tickets",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "golden ticket (plural golden tickets)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1998, Harvard Magazine, Volume 101, page 67",
          "text": "So the Harvard diploma is now, more than ever, a golden ticket to a certain kind of success.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Ange Picillo, How I Became the President of the Self-Centered Club for Men, page 2",
          "text": "The shiny brass trumpet that Pop bought was his golden ticket out of Poorville and onto the streets of the three F's Fame, Fortune and Freedom.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Melinda Doolittle, Ken Abraham, Beyond Me, ZONDERVAN, unnumbered page",
          "text": "A staffer handed me the coveted golden ticket, indicating that I had been invited to Hollywood, and I danced out the door.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A qualification, person or thing that can provide positive opportunities."
      ],
      "id": "en-golden_ticket-en-noun-V1LczBzl",
      "links": [
        [
          "qualification",
          "qualification"
        ],
        [
          "positive",
          "positive"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A qualification, person or thing that can provide positive opportunities."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Roald Dahl"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-golden ticket.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/48/En-au-golden_ticket.ogg/En-au-golden_ticket.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/En-au-golden_ticket.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "golden ticket"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "golden",
        "3": "ticket"
      },
      "expansion": "golden + ticket",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From golden + ticket; from golden referring to something valuable or desirable and ticket as something necessary for obtaining something. Popularized by the winning tickets in Roald Dahl's 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "golden tickets",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "golden ticket (plural golden tickets)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English compound terms",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1998, Harvard Magazine, Volume 101, page 67",
          "text": "So the Harvard diploma is now, more than ever, a golden ticket to a certain kind of success.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Ange Picillo, How I Became the President of the Self-Centered Club for Men, page 2",
          "text": "The shiny brass trumpet that Pop bought was his golden ticket out of Poorville and onto the streets of the three F's Fame, Fortune and Freedom.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Melinda Doolittle, Ken Abraham, Beyond Me, ZONDERVAN, unnumbered page",
          "text": "A staffer handed me the coveted golden ticket, indicating that I had been invited to Hollywood, and I danced out the door.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A qualification, person or thing that can provide positive opportunities."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "qualification",
          "qualification"
        ],
        [
          "positive",
          "positive"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A qualification, person or thing that can provide positive opportunities."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Roald Dahl"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-golden ticket.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/48/En-au-golden_ticket.ogg/En-au-golden_ticket.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/En-au-golden_ticket.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "golden ticket"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 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.