"killjoy" meaning in English

See killjoy in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/ [Canada, US] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-killjoy.wav Forms: killjoys [plural]
Etymology: From kill + joy, first attested in 1776. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|kill|joy}} kill + joy Head templates: {{en-noun}} killjoy (plural killjoys)
  1. (occasionally endearing, derogatory) A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun. Tags: derogatory Categories (topical): People, Personality Synonyms: buzzkill, miserabilist, dampener, party pooper, spoilsport, fun police, KJ

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "kill",
        "3": "joy"
      },
      "expansion": "kill + joy",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From kill + joy, first attested in 1776.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "killjoys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "killjoy (plural killjoys)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
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            "Fundamental"
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          "orig": "en:Personality",
          "parents": [
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            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1871, George Eliot, Middlemarch:",
          "text": "\"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection of my professional life. As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy....\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, →OCLC, page 123:",
          "text": "He stalked behind her simple narrative, a kill-joy parent, hasty, intolerant, keeping a special cane to enforce the authority of his sadistic God[.]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "text": "December 10 2005, Sam Murphy in The Guardian, A sober thought\nJust in time for the party season, some old killjoys at the journal Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise have released their findings on the effects on muscle of prolonged heavy alcohol intake (six weeks is prolonged, apparently). The bad news is that it seems too much boozing puts all that effort in the gym to waste - in the study, alcohol prevented the usual resistance-training-induced muscle response that leads to increased size and strength."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun."
      ],
      "id": "en-killjoy-en-noun-PWLM6UAm",
      "links": [
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        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "occasionally endearing",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(occasionally endearing, derogatory) A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "buzzkill"
        },
        {
          "word": "miserabilist"
        },
        {
          "word": "dampener"
        },
        {
          "word": "party pooper"
        },
        {
          "word": "spoilsport"
        },
        {
          "word": "fun police"
        },
        {
          "word": "KJ"
        }
      ],
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        "derogatory"
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  "sounds": [
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      "ipa": "/ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/",
      "tags": [
        "Canada",
        "US"
      ]
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  "etymology_templates": [
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      "args": {
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        "2": "kill",
        "3": "joy"
      },
      "expansion": "kill + joy",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From kill + joy, first attested in 1776.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "killjoys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
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        "English derogatory terms",
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        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English exocentric verb-noun compounds",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:People",
        "en:Personality"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1871, George Eliot, Middlemarch:",
          "text": "\"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection of my professional life. As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy....\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, →OCLC, page 123:",
          "text": "He stalked behind her simple narrative, a kill-joy parent, hasty, intolerant, keeping a special cane to enforce the authority of his sadistic God[.]",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "text": "December 10 2005, Sam Murphy in The Guardian, A sober thought\nJust in time for the party season, some old killjoys at the journal Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise have released their findings on the effects on muscle of prolonged heavy alcohol intake (six weeks is prolonged, apparently). The bad news is that it seems too much boozing puts all that effort in the gym to waste - in the study, alcohol prevented the usual resistance-training-induced muscle response that leads to increased size and strength."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun."
      ],
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(occasionally endearing, derogatory) A person who is anti-fun, or prevents others from having fun."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "ipa": "/ˈkɪlˌd͡ʒɔɪ/",
      "tags": [
        "Canada",
        "US"
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    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-killjoy.wav",
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d2/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-killjoy.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-killjoy.wav.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "buzzkill"
    },
    {
      "word": "miserabilist"
    },
    {
      "word": "dampener"
    },
    {
      "word": "party pooper"
    },
    {
      "word": "spoilsport"
    },
    {
      "word": "fun police"
    },
    {
      "word": "KJ"
    }
  ],
  "word": "killjoy"
}

Download raw JSONL data for killjoy meaning in English (3.0kB)


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.