"nuke it from orbit" meaning in English

See nuke it from orbit in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Etymology: Alteration of dialog from the 1986 movie Aliens in which Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) proposes a solution to an infestation of dangerous creatures: "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} nuke it from orbit
  1. (informal, often humorous) The referent of it is dangerous or undesirable and should be eliminated. Wikipedia link: Aliens (film), Sigourney Weaver Tags: humorous, informal, often
    Sense id: en-nuke_it_from_orbit-en-verb-6eDQWc2O Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for nuke it from orbit meaning in English (1.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Alteration of dialog from the 1986 movie Aliens in which Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) proposes a solution to an infestation of dangerous creatures: \"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.\"",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "nuke it from orbit",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "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"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The referent of it is dangerous or undesirable and should be eliminated."
      ],
      "id": "en-nuke_it_from_orbit-en-verb-6eDQWc2O",
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, often humorous) The referent of it is dangerous or undesirable and should be eliminated."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous",
        "informal",
        "often"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Aliens (film)",
        "Sigourney Weaver"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nuke it from orbit"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Alteration of dialog from the 1986 movie Aliens in which Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) proposes a solution to an infestation of dangerous creatures: \"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.\"",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "nuke it from orbit",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The referent of it is dangerous or undesirable and should be eliminated."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, often humorous) The referent of it is dangerous or undesirable and should be eliminated."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous",
        "informal",
        "often"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Aliens (film)",
        "Sigourney Weaver"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nuke it from orbit"
}

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.