"spherical cow" meaning in English

See spherical cow in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: spherical cows [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} spherical cow (plural spherical cows)
  1. (humorous) A highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon. Wikipedia link: spherical cow Tags: humorous Synonyms: spherical chicken
    Sense id: en-spherical_cow-en-noun-GNkqmXVk Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "spherical cows",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "spherical cow (plural spherical cows)",
      "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": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "Csaba Csaki (ed.), Scott Dodelson (ed.), Physics of the Large and the Small: TASI 09, Proceedings of the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute in Elementary Particle Physics (page 405)",
          "text": "[…] something of a \"spherical cow\" approximation of dark matter."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon."
      ],
      "id": "en-spherical_cow-en-noun-GNkqmXVk",
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "highly",
          "highly"
        ],
        [
          "simplified",
          "simplified"
        ],
        [
          "scientific model",
          "scientific model"
        ],
        [
          "complex",
          "complex"
        ],
        [
          "real-life",
          "real-life"
        ],
        [
          "phenomenon",
          "phenomenon"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) A highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "spherical chicken"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "spherical cow"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "spherical cow"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "spherical cows",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "spherical cow (plural spherical cows)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "Csaba Csaki (ed.), Scott Dodelson (ed.), Physics of the Large and the Small: TASI 09, Proceedings of the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute in Elementary Particle Physics (page 405)",
          "text": "[…] something of a \"spherical cow\" approximation of dark matter."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "highly",
          "highly"
        ],
        [
          "simplified",
          "simplified"
        ],
        [
          "scientific model",
          "scientific model"
        ],
        [
          "complex",
          "complex"
        ],
        [
          "real-life",
          "real-life"
        ],
        [
          "phenomenon",
          "phenomenon"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) A highly simplified scientific model of a complex real-life phenomenon."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "spherical chicken"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "spherical cow"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "spherical cow"
}

Download raw JSONL data for spherical cow meaning in English (1.2kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (c15a5ce and 5c11237). 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.