"have Van Gogh's ear for music" meaning in English

See have Van Gogh's ear for music in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-have Van Gogh's ear for music.ogg [Australia] Forms: has Van Gogh's ear for music [present, singular, third-person], having Van Gogh's ear for music [participle, present], had Van Gogh's ear for music [participle, past], had Van Gogh's ear for music [past]
Etymology: Van Gogh (a painter, not a musician) is famed for cutting off his own ear. The phrase is attributed to Billy Wilder. Head templates: {{en-verb|have<has,,had> Van Gogh's ear for music}} have Van Gogh's ear for music (third-person singular simple present has Van Gogh's ear for music, present participle having Van Gogh's ear for music, simple past and past participle had Van Gogh's ear for music)
  1. (humorous) To be tone-deaf. Wikipedia link: Billy Wilder, Van Gogh Tags: humorous Translations (humorous: to be tone-deaf): медве́дь на у́хо наступил (medvédʹ na úxo nastupil) (Russian)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for have Van Gogh's ear for music meaning in English (3.1kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Van Gogh (a painter, not a musician) is famed for cutting off his own ear. The phrase is attributed to Billy Wilder.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "has Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "having Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "have<has,,had> Van Gogh's ear for music"
      },
      "expansion": "have Van Gogh's ear for music (third-person singular simple present has Van Gogh's ear for music, present participle having Van Gogh's ear for music, simple past and past participle had Van Gogh's ear for music)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1970, Tom Wood, The bright side of Billy Wilder, primarily",
          "text": "After listening to Cliff Osmond, a huge, 225-pound actor, rehearse a song he was to sing as part of his role in Kiss Me, Stupid, Billy observed, not unkindly, \"You have Van Gogh's ear for music.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Stephen Murray, Darin Jewell, Dirty Laundry, page 2",
          "text": "[…] some inebriated idiot belting out a karaoke number thinking that he or she is perfectly in tune and the rest of the audience is somehow captivated by the performance — most of them have Van Gogh's ear for music.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Joseph O'Connor, Cowboys and Indians, page 148",
          "text": "Brian had Van Gogh's ear for music. When Clint told him that he said, 'Hey, that's great, thanks Clint,' like it was a compliment.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be tone-deaf."
      ],
      "id": "en-have_Van_Gogh's_ear_for_music-en-verb-ummg0th-",
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "tone-deaf",
          "tone-deaf"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) To be tone-deaf."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "medvédʹ na úxo nastupil",
          "sense": "humorous: to be tone-deaf",
          "word": "медве́дь на у́хо наступил"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Billy Wilder",
        "Van Gogh"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-have Van Gogh's ear for music.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/55/En-au-have_Van_Gogh%27s_ear_for_music.ogg/En-au-have_Van_Gogh%27s_ear_for_music.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/En-au-have_Van_Gogh%27s_ear_for_music.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "have Van Gogh's ear for music"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Van Gogh (a painter, not a musician) is famed for cutting off his own ear. The phrase is attributed to Billy Wilder.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "has Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "having Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had Van Gogh's ear for music",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "have<has,,had> Van Gogh's ear for music"
      },
      "expansion": "have Van Gogh's ear for music (third-person singular simple present has Van Gogh's ear for music, present participle having Van Gogh's ear for music, simple past and past participle had Van Gogh's ear for music)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English eponyms",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1970, Tom Wood, The bright side of Billy Wilder, primarily",
          "text": "After listening to Cliff Osmond, a huge, 225-pound actor, rehearse a song he was to sing as part of his role in Kiss Me, Stupid, Billy observed, not unkindly, \"You have Van Gogh's ear for music.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Stephen Murray, Darin Jewell, Dirty Laundry, page 2",
          "text": "[…] some inebriated idiot belting out a karaoke number thinking that he or she is perfectly in tune and the rest of the audience is somehow captivated by the performance — most of them have Van Gogh's ear for music.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Joseph O'Connor, Cowboys and Indians, page 148",
          "text": "Brian had Van Gogh's ear for music. When Clint told him that he said, 'Hey, that's great, thanks Clint,' like it was a compliment.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be tone-deaf."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "tone-deaf",
          "tone-deaf"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) To be tone-deaf."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Billy Wilder",
        "Van Gogh"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-have Van Gogh's ear for music.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/55/En-au-have_Van_Gogh%27s_ear_for_music.ogg/En-au-have_Van_Gogh%27s_ear_for_music.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/En-au-have_Van_Gogh%27s_ear_for_music.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "medvédʹ na úxo nastupil",
      "sense": "humorous: to be tone-deaf",
      "word": "медве́дь на у́хо наступил"
    }
  ],
  "word": "have Van Gogh's ear for music"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.