"not worth the powder" meaning in English

See not worth the powder in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Etymology: An allusion to gunpowder being wasted on small birds etc. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} not worth the powder
  1. (colloquial) Not worth the time or effort. Tags: colloquial Synonyms: not worth the powder and shot Related terms: juice is worth the squeeze
    Sense id: en-not_worth_the_powder-en-phrase-xd78w32R

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for not worth the powder meaning in English (0.6kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [],
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to gunpowder being wasted on small birds etc.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "not worth the powder",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "glosses": [
        "Not worth the time or effort."
      ],
      "id": "en-not_worth_the_powder-en-phrase-xd78w32R",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) Not worth the time or effort."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "juice is worth the squeeze"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "not worth the powder and shot"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "not worth the powder"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [],
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to gunpowder being wasted on small birds etc.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "not worth the powder",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "juice is worth the squeeze"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Not worth the time or effort."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) Not worth the time or effort."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "not worth the powder and shot"
    }
  ],
  "word": "not worth the powder"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-03-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-03-01 using wiktextract (68773ab and 5f6ddbb). 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.