"nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people" meaning in English

See nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Etymology: Widely attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with certainty. Head templates: {{head|en|proverb}} nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people
  1. Americans, as a group, do not have good taste or sophistication and can be easily amused or distracted to produce financial benefit for someone. Wikipedia link: H. L. Mencken, Ralph Keyes (author) Synonyms: nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people Related terms: nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people meaning in English (2.6kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Widely attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with certainty.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb"
      },
      "expansion": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "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 negative polarity items",
          "parents": [
            "Negative polarity items",
            "Terms by semantic function"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English proverbs",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English sentences",
          "parents": [],
          "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": "1982 June 13, Edwin McDowell, “About Books and Authors”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-09-13",
          "text": "“I remembered that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, so I set out to write the worst novel it was humanly possible to write and still get published,” he said.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Americans, as a group, do not have good taste or sophistication and can be easily amused or distracted to produce financial benefit for someone."
      ],
      "id": "en-nobody_ever_went_broke_underestimating_the_taste_of_the_American_people-en-proverb-PaJ49qdt",
      "links": [
        [
          "American",
          "American"
        ],
        [
          "good",
          "good"
        ],
        [
          "taste",
          "taste"
        ],
        [
          "sophistication",
          "sophistication"
        ],
        [
          "easily",
          "easily"
        ],
        [
          "amuse",
          "amuse"
        ],
        [
          "distract",
          "distract"
        ],
        [
          "financial",
          "financial"
        ],
        [
          "benefit",
          "benefit"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"
        },
        {
          "word": "no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "H. L. Mencken",
        "Ralph Keyes (author)"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Widely attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with certainty.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb"
      },
      "expansion": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English negative polarity items",
        "English proverbs",
        "English sentences",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1982 June 13, Edwin McDowell, “About Books and Authors”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-09-13",
          "text": "“I remembered that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, so I set out to write the worst novel it was humanly possible to write and still get published,” he said.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Americans, as a group, do not have good taste or sophistication and can be easily amused or distracted to produce financial benefit for someone."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "American",
          "American"
        ],
        [
          "good",
          "good"
        ],
        [
          "taste",
          "taste"
        ],
        [
          "sophistication",
          "sophistication"
        ],
        [
          "easily",
          "easily"
        ],
        [
          "amuse",
          "amuse"
        ],
        [
          "distract",
          "distract"
        ],
        [
          "financial",
          "financial"
        ],
        [
          "benefit",
          "benefit"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "H. L. Mencken",
        "Ralph Keyes (author)"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public"
    },
    {
      "word": "no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people"
    }
  ],
  "word": "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people"
}

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.