"nail Jell-O to a tree" meaning in English

See nail Jell-O to a tree in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-nail Jell-O to a tree.ogg [Australia] Forms: nails Jell-O to a tree [present, singular, third-person], nailing Jell-O to a tree [participle, present], nailed Jell-O to a tree [participle, past], nailed Jell-O to a tree [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} nail Jell-O to a tree (third-person singular simple present nails Jell-O to a tree, present participle nailing Jell-O to a tree, simple past and past participle nailed Jell-O to a tree)
  1. (US, slang, rare) To do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness. Tags: US, rare, slang Synonyms: nail Jell-O to a wall Related terms: difficult
    Sense id: en-nail_Jell-O_to_a_tree-en-verb-UWCCUBM3 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for nail Jell-O to a tree meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nails Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
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    },
    {
      "form": "nailing Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "nailed Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "nailed Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "nail Jell-O to a tree (third-person singular simple present nails Jell-O to a tree, present participle nailing Jell-O to a tree, simple past and past participle nailed Jell-O to a tree)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "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": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They are asking us to nail Jell-O to a tree if they insist on having everything done in three days."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness."
      ],
      "id": "en-nail_Jell-O_to_a_tree-en-verb-UWCCUBM3",
      "links": [
        [
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        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US, slang, rare) To do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "difficult"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "nail Jell-O to a wall"
        }
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      "tags": [
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      "tags": [
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  "word": "nail Jell-O to a tree"
}
{
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      "form": "nails Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
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      "form": "nailing Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "nailed Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "nailed Jell-O to a tree",
      "tags": [
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
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  "lang_code": "en",
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        "English terms with rare senses",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They are asking us to nail Jell-O to a tree if they insist on having everything done in three days."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness."
      ],
      "links": [
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        ],
        [
          "difficult",
          "difficult"
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          "pointless"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US, slang, rare) To do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "rare",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "nail Jell-O to a wall"
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  "word": "nail Jell-O to a tree"
}

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.