Word.ws English Dictionary

dead donkey

dead donkey noun: a rarity.

Noun

dead donkey (plural dead donkeys)

  1. A rarity.
    • A dead bore is as rare a phenomenon as a dead donkey or a dead attorney.1833, The Dublin University Magazine: A Literary and Political Journal
    • “No,” rejoined Sam, triumphantly. “Nor never vill; and there's another thing that no man never see, and that’s a dead donkey—no man never see a dead donkey, ’cept the gen’l’m’n in the black silk smalls as know’d the young ’ooman as kept a goat; and that wos a French donkey, so wery likely he warn’t...1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter LII, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC, page 544
  2. A news item of no real significance, usually of whimsical or sentimental nature, placed at the end of a news bulletin or in a newspaper as filler. A dead donkey can often be removed from the programme or publication if a more significant story needs extra time or space.
    • Swap these ages around to produce a 59-year-old father and a 45-year-old mother and what was previously a hot news story becomes a dead donkey.1994, New Scientist, volume 141, numbers 1907–1912, page 3
    • Those are the people who should have some protection from media excesses, even if only to gain some form of compensation for the damage sustained once the media has left and they, like the proverbial dead donkey, are dropped, their lives in tatters, because they were used by the media in an...1999, Council of Europe. Parliamentary Assembly, Official Report of Debates, volume 2, page 525
  3. Something useless on which time or effort is wasted.
    • What, if you like, could be more sensational than the fact that the ancient island of Cythera, " sacred," as Lemrière says, "to the Goddess Venus, who rose, as some suppose, from the sea, near its coasts," has been quite happily governed for three months by an assembly of islanders under the...1917, Robert William Seton-Watson, The New Europe: A Weekly Review of Foreign Politics
    • Happily he cannot effect this object for Haldane has a backbone and will go straight on regardless of all the old boys and professors who beat your "dead donkeys of pedantic professionalism".1999, Charles à Court Repington, A. J. Anthony Morris, The Letters of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles À Court Repington

dead donkey meaning in Bengali

dead donkey in Bengali

একটি দুর্লভতা, সাধারণত হাস্যকর, আবেগময় প্রকৃতির

Examples of dead donkey in a sentence

  • I say, if they only get proper treatment, it will be no more likely to see a dead heath than it would be to see a dead donkey.1843, John Claudius Loudon, The Gardener's Magazine:
  • African denunciations of Mau Mau have become rarer than dead donkeys.1953, The Socialist Leader:
  • MESSRS DIXON AND ATKINSON state that broken neutrals are seen as often as a dead donkey.1969, Electrical Times, volume 156, page 12:
  • Jacques, that's our gardener, says nobody has ever seen a dead donkey.2010, Allan Massie, A Question of Loyalties:

Forms of dead donkey

pluraldead donkeys

Origin of dead donkey

From the saying that no one ever sees a dead donkey, hence a rarity. This then became a stock example of a slow-news-day story, which was popularized by the title of the British sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey.

Questions about dead donkey

What does dead donkey mean?
Dead donkey means a rarity.
What is dead donkey in Bengali?
Dead donkey in Bengali is একটি দুর্লভতা, সাধারণত হাস্যকর, আবেগময় প্রকৃতির. See Dead donkey meaning in Bengali.
How do you use dead donkey in a sentence?
I say, if they only get proper treatment, it will be no more likely to see a dead heath than it would be to see a dead donkey.
What part of speech is dead donkey?
Dead donkey is a noun.
What is the plural of dead donkey?
The plural of dead donkey is dead donkeys.

Words near dead donkey in the dictionary

  1. dead code
  2. dead coloring
  3. dead colouring
  4. dead comet
  5. dead comets
  6. dead donkey
  7. dead donkeys
  8. dead door
  9. dead doors
  10. dead dove
  11. dead dove: do not eat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead donkey (page history and authors); dead donkey (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-dead donkey.wav.

Cite this entry: “dead donkey.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dead_donkey. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.