"yellow brick road" meaning in English

See yellow brick road in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-yellow brick road.ogg [Australia] Forms: yellow brick roads [plural]
Etymology: From the classic film The Wizard of Oz and the book series on which it was based. Originally the literal road to the Emerald City, which was paved with yellow bricks possibly to invoke the notion of gold. Head templates: {{en-noun}} yellow brick road (plural yellow brick roads)
  1. (idiomatic, often humorous) A proverbial path to a Promised Land of one's hopes and dreams. Tags: humorous, idiomatic, often Categories (topical): The Wizard of Oz Synonyms: yellow-brick road

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for yellow brick road meaning in English (3.3kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the classic film The Wizard of Oz and the book series on which it was based. Originally the literal road to the Emerald City, which was paved with yellow bricks possibly to invoke the notion of gold.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "yellow brick roads",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "yellow brick road (plural yellow brick roads)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English allusions",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "The Wizard of Oz",
          "orig": "en:The Wizard of Oz",
          "parents": [
            "American fiction",
            "Literature",
            "Fiction",
            "United States",
            "Culture",
            "Entertainment",
            "Writing",
            "Artistic works",
            "North America",
            "Society",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "Art",
            "America",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Communication",
            "Earth",
            "Fundamental",
            "Nature"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2007 December 10, Morgan Housel, “The Impending Destruction of the U.S. Economy: Part 1”, in The Motley Fool",
          "text": "But we're coming up on a bend in the yellow brick road, and going 'round it could cause the party lights to go dark quickly.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 December 21, “Hillary's mountain gets higher”, in The Sydney Morning Herald",
          "text": "But for Clinton the yellow brick road that led inevitably to the Democratic nomination has suddenly become a little bumpy.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 August 19, Emma Kennedy, “Relax - a gap year's supposed to be fun”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Smash the emergency glass, press the big red button and just STOP. Step off the Yellow Brick Road, get mixed up with some flying monkeys and throw yourself into all manner of trouble. Trust me. IT'S YOUR LAST CHANCE.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A proverbial path to a Promised Land of one's hopes and dreams."
      ],
      "id": "en-yellow_brick_road-en-noun-xQpp47f2",
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "proverbial",
          "proverbial"
        ],
        [
          "Promised Land",
          "Promised Land"
        ],
        [
          "hope",
          "hope"
        ],
        [
          "dream",
          "dream"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often humorous) A proverbial path to a Promised Land of one's hopes and dreams."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "yellow-brick road"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous",
        "idiomatic",
        "often"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-yellow brick road.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f4/En-au-yellow_brick_road.ogg/En-au-yellow_brick_road.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/En-au-yellow_brick_road.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "yellow brick road"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the classic film The Wizard of Oz and the book series on which it was based. Originally the literal road to the Emerald City, which was paved with yellow bricks possibly to invoke the notion of gold.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "yellow brick roads",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "yellow brick road (plural yellow brick roads)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English allusions",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:The Wizard of Oz"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2007 December 10, Morgan Housel, “The Impending Destruction of the U.S. Economy: Part 1”, in The Motley Fool",
          "text": "But we're coming up on a bend in the yellow brick road, and going 'round it could cause the party lights to go dark quickly.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 December 21, “Hillary's mountain gets higher”, in The Sydney Morning Herald",
          "text": "But for Clinton the yellow brick road that led inevitably to the Democratic nomination has suddenly become a little bumpy.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 August 19, Emma Kennedy, “Relax - a gap year's supposed to be fun”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Smash the emergency glass, press the big red button and just STOP. Step off the Yellow Brick Road, get mixed up with some flying monkeys and throw yourself into all manner of trouble. Trust me. IT'S YOUR LAST CHANCE.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A proverbial path to a Promised Land of one's hopes and dreams."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "proverbial",
          "proverbial"
        ],
        [
          "Promised Land",
          "Promised Land"
        ],
        [
          "hope",
          "hope"
        ],
        [
          "dream",
          "dream"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often humorous) A proverbial path to a Promised Land of one's hopes and dreams."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous",
        "idiomatic",
        "often"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-yellow brick road.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f4/En-au-yellow_brick_road.ogg/En-au-yellow_brick_road.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/En-au-yellow_brick_road.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "yellow-brick road"
    }
  ],
  "word": "yellow brick road"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 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.