"rocket surgeon" meaning in English

See rocket surgeon in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-rocket surgeon.wav [US] Forms: rocket surgeons [plural]
Etymology: Blend of rocket scientist + brain surgeon, as both are commonly used in such phrases as "you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand it". Etymology templates: {{blend|en|rocket scientist|brain surgeon}} Blend of rocket scientist + brain surgeon Head templates: {{en-noun}} rocket surgeon (plural rocket surgeons)
  1. (humorous) Someone qualified to understand or handle that which is overly complex, detailed or confusing. Tags: humorous Synonyms: brain surgeon, rocket scientist Related terms: rocket surgery Coordinate_terms: brain surgery, rocket science, rocket surgery
    Sense id: en-rocket_surgeon-en-noun-MCFyaNpN Categories (other): English blends, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, People

Inflected forms

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  "etymology_text": "Blend of rocket scientist + brain surgeon, as both are commonly used in such phrases as \"you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand it\".",
  "forms": [
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      "tags": [
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  "pos": "noun",
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        }
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      "coordinate_terms": [
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          "word": "rocket surgery"
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      "examples": [
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          "bold_text_offsets": [
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              115,
              129
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2012, Chris Vander Mey, “How to measure greatness”, in Shipping Greatness, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 89:",
          "text": "At this point you may be thinking, “I know all about goals. I know to make them S.M.A.R.T.” What's S.M.A.R.T? Some rocket surgeon a while back came up with the notion that goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and time-based.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone qualified to understand or handle that which is overly complex, detailed or confusing."
      ],
      "id": "en-rocket_surgeon-en-noun-MCFyaNpN",
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        "(humorous) Someone qualified to understand or handle that which is overly complex, detailed or confusing."
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          "word": "rocket surgery"
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        {
          "word": "rocket scientist"
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  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "rocket surgery"
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  ],
  "senses": [
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        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
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          "word": "rocket surgery"
        }
      ],
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          ],
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          "text": "At this point you may be thinking, “I know all about goals. I know to make them S.M.A.R.T.” What's S.M.A.R.T? Some rocket surgeon a while back came up with the notion that goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and time-based.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone qualified to understand or handle that which is overly complex, detailed or confusing."
      ],
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        "(humorous) Someone qualified to understand or handle that which is overly complex, detailed or confusing."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "brain surgeon"
        },
        {
          "word": "rocket scientist"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "word": "rocket surgeon"
}

Download raw JSONL data for rocket surgeon meaning in English (2.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-06-07 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-06-01 using wiktextract (e79dea5 and 7f4db16). 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.