"tin ear" meaning in English

See tin ear in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-tin ear.ogg [Australia] Forms: tin ears [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} tin ear (plural tin ears)
  1. (idiomatic) Insensitivity to and inability to appreciate the elements of performed music or the rhythm, elegance, or nuances of language. Tags: idiomatic Translations (inability to appreciate the elements of performed music): peltikorva (Finnish), kein musikalisches Gehör haben (english: to have a tin ear) (German), botfül (Hungarian), uten musikkøre [neuter] (Norwegian), słoń nadepnął komuś na ucho (Polish), медве́дь на у́хо наступи́л (medvédʹ na úxo nastupíl) (english: bear stepped on ear) (Russian)
    Sense id: en-tin_ear-en-noun-xLYRxXU~ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 61 39 Disambiguation of 'inability to appreciate the elements of performed music': 97 3
  2. (idiomatic) Insensitivity to the nuances of the current situation or the subtleties of a craft; indifference to somebody else's attitudes, moods, and dialogue. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-tin_ear-en-noun-5DIc3VMW
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: cloth-eared, tone-deaf

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for tin ear meaning in English (4.2kB)

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          "ref": "1973, Thomas Cable, “A Garland of Pomposities: Comment on Halle-Keyser Prosody”, in College English, volume 34, number 4, page 593",
          "text": "Despite their careless scholarship and a less tangible quality that some would call a tin ear for poetry, Morris Halle and S. J. Keyser, as metrists, have the considerable virtue of explicitness.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "Insensitivity to and inability to appreciate the elements of performed music or the rhythm, elegance, or nuances of language."
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        "(idiomatic) Insensitivity to and inability to appreciate the elements of performed music or the rhythm, elegance, or nuances of language."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
          "word": "peltikorva"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "de",
          "english": "to have a tin ear",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
          "word": "kein musikalisches Gehör haben"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "hu",
          "lang": "Hungarian",
          "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
          "word": "botfül"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "no",
          "lang": "Norwegian",
          "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
          "tags": [
            "neuter"
          ],
          "word": "uten musikkøre"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
          "word": "słoń nadepnął komuś na ucho"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "ru",
          "english": "bear stepped on ear",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "medvédʹ na úxo nastupíl",
          "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
          "word": "медве́дь на у́хо наступи́л"
        }
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          "ref": "2012 August 18, “Ripping yarns: A revived spat between Japan and South Korea unsettles the United States”, in The Economist",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 December 2, Philip Haigh, “A winter of discontent caused by threat of union action”, in Rail, page 63",
          "text": "With the economy as it is, I think the RMT has a tin ear to think it will find sympathy or public support for strike action. I hope sense prevails,",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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      ],
      "id": "en-tin_ear-en-noun-5DIc3VMW",
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        "(idiomatic) Insensitivity to the nuances of the current situation or the subtleties of a craft; indifference to somebody else's attitudes, moods, and dialogue."
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        "(idiomatic) Insensitivity to and inability to appreciate the elements of performed music or the rhythm, elegance, or nuances of language."
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        "(idiomatic) Insensitivity to the nuances of the current situation or the subtleties of a craft; indifference to somebody else's attitudes, moods, and dialogue."
      ],
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        "idiomatic"
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    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
      "word": "peltikorva"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "english": "to have a tin ear",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
      "word": "kein musikalisches Gehör haben"
    },
    {
      "code": "hu",
      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
      "word": "botfül"
    },
    {
      "code": "no",
      "lang": "Norwegian",
      "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
      "tags": [
        "neuter"
      ],
      "word": "uten musikkøre"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
      "word": "słoń nadepnął komuś na ucho"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "english": "bear stepped on ear",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "medvédʹ na úxo nastupíl",
      "sense": "inability to appreciate the elements of performed music",
      "word": "медве́дь на у́хо наступи́л"
    }
  ],
  "word": "tin ear"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.