"there is no spoon" meaning in English

See there is no spoon in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Etymology: From The Matrix (1999), in which a boy appears to be able to bend a spoon with his mind. The boy says: "There is no spoon.", referring to the fact that he and others are actually in a large-scale computer simulation. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} there is no spoon
  1. A certain problem or obstacle only exists if one believes in it; therefore, it is possible to overcome it by denying its existence. Wikipedia link: The Matrix
    Sense id: en-there_is_no_spoon-en-phrase-WjmTtUPT Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for there is no spoon meaning in English (1.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From The Matrix (1999), in which a boy appears to be able to bend a spoon with his mind. The boy says: \"There is no spoon.\", referring to the fact that he and others are actually in a large-scale computer simulation.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "there is no spoon",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2003 December 28, Hannes Brunner, “There is no spoon ... ehrm wall :)”, in alt.games.diablo2 (Usenet), message-ID <bsmqba$e871i$1@ID-199901.news.uni-berlin.de>",
          "text": "[the phrase \"there is no spoon\" appears in the page title]\nThere is no wall. It's all in your mind. Keep trying.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 March 1, neo, “There is no spoon.”, in alt.support.headaches.migraine (Usenet), message-ID <1172765712.686536.308230@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>",
          "roman": "Should I dare to take just neo therapy next time? Haa haa haa",
          "text": "Let me apply neo therapy.\nThere is no spoon(migraine).\nAfter 20 minutes I am almost normal.\nWas it due to pill or neo therapy, I don't know.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A certain problem or obstacle only exists if one believes in it; therefore, it is possible to overcome it by denying its existence."
      ],
      "id": "en-there_is_no_spoon-en-phrase-WjmTtUPT",
      "links": [
        [
          "problem",
          "problem"
        ],
        [
          "obstacle",
          "obstacle"
        ],
        [
          "exist",
          "exist"
        ],
        [
          "overcome",
          "overcome"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "The Matrix"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "there is no spoon"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From The Matrix (1999), in which a boy appears to be able to bend a spoon with his mind. The boy says: \"There is no spoon.\", referring to the fact that he and others are actually in a large-scale computer simulation.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "there is no spoon",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2003 December 28, Hannes Brunner, “There is no spoon ... ehrm wall :)”, in alt.games.diablo2 (Usenet), message-ID <bsmqba$e871i$1@ID-199901.news.uni-berlin.de>",
          "text": "[the phrase \"there is no spoon\" appears in the page title]\nThere is no wall. It's all in your mind. Keep trying.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 March 1, neo, “There is no spoon.”, in alt.support.headaches.migraine (Usenet), message-ID <1172765712.686536.308230@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com>",
          "roman": "Should I dare to take just neo therapy next time? Haa haa haa",
          "text": "Let me apply neo therapy.\nThere is no spoon(migraine).\nAfter 20 minutes I am almost normal.\nWas it due to pill or neo therapy, I don't know.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A certain problem or obstacle only exists if one believes in it; therefore, it is possible to overcome it by denying its existence."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "problem",
          "problem"
        ],
        [
          "obstacle",
          "obstacle"
        ],
        [
          "exist",
          "exist"
        ],
        [
          "overcome",
          "overcome"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "The Matrix"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "there is no spoon"
}

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.