"plot coupon" meaning in English

See plot coupon in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: plot coupons [plural]
Etymology: Coined by critic Nick Lowe. Head templates: {{en-noun}} plot coupon (plural plot coupons)
  1. (fandom slang) An object sought by a character in a story in order to achieve some objective, having little purpose beyond advancing the plot. Tags: slang Categories (topical): Plot devices Related terms: Chekhov's gun, deus ex machina, MacGuffin
    Sense id: en-plot_coupon-en-noun-L5tkjBui Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Topics: lifestyle

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for plot coupon meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by critic Nick Lowe.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plot coupons",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "plot coupon (plural plot coupons)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Plot devices",
          "orig": "en:Plot devices",
          "parents": [
            "Fiction",
            "Narratology",
            "Artistic works",
            "Drama",
            "Literature",
            "Art",
            "Theater",
            "Culture",
            "Entertainment",
            "Writing",
            "Society",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Communication",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2004, Foundation, volume 33, numbers 90-92, page 126",
          "text": "[…] pain to see Clute single-handedly tackle multi-volume fantasy extrusion-product, with its flimsy plot coupons and its stale eucatastrophes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An object sought by a character in a story in order to achieve some objective, having little purpose beyond advancing the plot."
      ],
      "id": "en-plot_coupon-en-noun-L5tkjBui",
      "links": [
        [
          "fandom",
          "fandom"
        ],
        [
          "slang",
          "slang"
        ],
        [
          "object",
          "object"
        ],
        [
          "character",
          "character"
        ],
        [
          "story",
          "story"
        ],
        [
          "objective",
          "objective"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(fandom slang) An object sought by a character in a story in order to achieve some objective, having little purpose beyond advancing the plot."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Chekhov's gun"
        },
        {
          "word": "deus ex machina"
        },
        {
          "word": "MacGuffin"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "lifestyle"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "plot coupon"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by critic Nick Lowe.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plot coupons",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "plot coupon (plural plot coupons)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Chekhov's gun"
    },
    {
      "word": "deus ex machina"
    },
    {
      "word": "MacGuffin"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English fandom slang",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Plot devices"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2004, Foundation, volume 33, numbers 90-92, page 126",
          "text": "[…] pain to see Clute single-handedly tackle multi-volume fantasy extrusion-product, with its flimsy plot coupons and its stale eucatastrophes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An object sought by a character in a story in order to achieve some objective, having little purpose beyond advancing the plot."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "fandom",
          "fandom"
        ],
        [
          "slang",
          "slang"
        ],
        [
          "object",
          "object"
        ],
        [
          "character",
          "character"
        ],
        [
          "story",
          "story"
        ],
        [
          "objective",
          "objective"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(fandom slang) An object sought by a character in a story in order to achieve some objective, having little purpose beyond advancing the plot."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "lifestyle"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "plot coupon"
}

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.