"one-way ticket to Palookaville" meaning in English

See one-way ticket to Palookaville in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: one-way tickets to Palookaville [plural]
Etymology: From a line in the 1954 film On the Waterfront. Head templates: {{en-noun|one-way tickets to Palookaville|head=one-way ticket to Palookaville}} one-way ticket to Palookaville (plural one-way tickets to Palookaville)
  1. (idiomatic, originally US) Something that results in failure or obscurity, with no chance at redemption; a dead end. Wikipedia link: On the Waterfront Tags: idiomatic

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for one-way ticket to Palookaville meaning in English (2.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From a line in the 1954 film On the Waterfront.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "one-way tickets to Palookaville",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "one-way tickets to Palookaville",
        "head": "one-way ticket to Palookaville"
      },
      "expansion": "one-way ticket to Palookaville (plural one-way tickets to Palookaville)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
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          "parents": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1954, Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront, spoken by Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando)",
          "text": "[…] You remember that? \"This ain't your night\"! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville![…]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Douglas Booth, The Field: Truth and Fiction in Sport History, page 128",
          "text": "Proper German gentlemen harbored a particular distaste for boxing and its two-fisted muscularity, considering it lower class and bestial, a one way ticket to Palookaville.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, James Howard Kunstler, Too Much Magic",
          "text": "[…] History is also not symmetrical; you don't necessarily go down in the same sequence backward. What we might get instead could be just a one-way ticket to Palookaville instead of getting to relive the sixteenth century.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Rhodri Morgan, Rhodri: A Political Life in Wales and Westminster, page 114",
          "text": "Well, my one-way ticket to palookaville turned out to be the chairmanship of the select Committee on public Administration. it had never been a particularly prestigious select Committee, but I was going to chair it and I could make of it what I wanted.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something that results in failure or obscurity, with no chance at redemption; a dead end."
      ],
      "id": "en-one-way_ticket_to_Palookaville-en-noun-Xp6zeGOC",
      "links": [
        [
          "failure",
          "failure"
        ],
        [
          "obscurity",
          "obscurity"
        ],
        [
          "redemption",
          "redemption"
        ],
        [
          "dead end",
          "dead end"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, originally US) Something that results in failure or obscurity, with no chance at redemption; a dead end."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "On the Waterfront"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "one-way ticket to Palookaville"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From a line in the 1954 film On the Waterfront.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "one-way tickets to Palookaville",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "one-way tickets to Palookaville",
        "head": "one-way ticket to Palookaville"
      },
      "expansion": "one-way ticket to Palookaville (plural one-way tickets to Palookaville)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1954, Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront, spoken by Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando)",
          "text": "[…] You remember that? \"This ain't your night\"! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville![…]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Douglas Booth, The Field: Truth and Fiction in Sport History, page 128",
          "text": "Proper German gentlemen harbored a particular distaste for boxing and its two-fisted muscularity, considering it lower class and bestial, a one way ticket to Palookaville.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, James Howard Kunstler, Too Much Magic",
          "text": "[…] History is also not symmetrical; you don't necessarily go down in the same sequence backward. What we might get instead could be just a one-way ticket to Palookaville instead of getting to relive the sixteenth century.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Rhodri Morgan, Rhodri: A Political Life in Wales and Westminster, page 114",
          "text": "Well, my one-way ticket to palookaville turned out to be the chairmanship of the select Committee on public Administration. it had never been a particularly prestigious select Committee, but I was going to chair it and I could make of it what I wanted.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something that results in failure or obscurity, with no chance at redemption; a dead end."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "failure",
          "failure"
        ],
        [
          "obscurity",
          "obscurity"
        ],
        [
          "redemption",
          "redemption"
        ],
        [
          "dead end",
          "dead end"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, originally US) Something that results in failure or obscurity, with no chance at redemption; a dead end."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "On the Waterfront"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "one-way ticket to Palookaville"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 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.

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