"gong show" meaning in English

See gong show in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: gong shows [plural]
Etymology: After The Gong Show, a televised absurdist amateur talent contest first broadcast in the 1970s. Head templates: {{en-noun}} gong show (plural gong shows)
  1. (Canada) An event that proves to be a disaster, often in a fun or memorable way. Wikipedia link: The Gong Show Tags: Canada Synonyms: amateur hour, clusterfuck, comedy of errors, fiasco, shit show
    Sense id: en-gong_show-en-noun-8PG4e9YV Categories (other): Canadian English, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for gong show meaning in English (1.3kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "After The Gong Show, a televised absurdist amateur talent contest first broadcast in the 1970s.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "gong shows",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "gong show (plural gong shows)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Canadian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Last night, we all went drinking, and the whole thing turned into a total gong show."
        },
        {
          "text": "That biology class was a gong show."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An event that proves to be a disaster, often in a fun or memorable way."
      ],
      "id": "en-gong_show-en-noun-8PG4e9YV",
      "links": [
        [
          "event",
          "event"
        ],
        [
          "disaster",
          "disaster"
        ],
        [
          "fun",
          "fun"
        ],
        [
          "memorable",
          "memorable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Canada) An event that proves to be a disaster, often in a fun or memorable way."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "amateur hour"
        },
        {
          "word": "clusterfuck"
        },
        {
          "word": "comedy of errors"
        },
        {
          "word": "fiasco"
        },
        {
          "word": "shit show"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Canada"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "The Gong Show"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "gong show"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "After The Gong Show, a televised absurdist amateur talent contest first broadcast in the 1970s.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "gong shows",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "gong show (plural gong shows)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Canadian English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Last night, we all went drinking, and the whole thing turned into a total gong show."
        },
        {
          "text": "That biology class was a gong show."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An event that proves to be a disaster, often in a fun or memorable way."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "event",
          "event"
        ],
        [
          "disaster",
          "disaster"
        ],
        [
          "fun",
          "fun"
        ],
        [
          "memorable",
          "memorable"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Canada) An event that proves to be a disaster, often in a fun or memorable way."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Canada"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "The Gong Show"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "amateur hour"
    },
    {
      "word": "clusterfuck"
    },
    {
      "word": "comedy of errors"
    },
    {
      "word": "fiasco"
    },
    {
      "word": "shit show"
    }
  ],
  "word": "gong show"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c 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.