Word.ws English Dictionary

lead balloon

lead balloon noun: a failure, especially something that fails to have the intended resonance with an audience.

Noun

lead balloon (plural lead balloons)

  1. A failure, especially something that fails to have the intended resonance with an audience.
    • After the collusion story proved a bust, there was an attempt to blow some life into the obstruction of justice charge. But that was a lead balloon with the American people.2019 November 17, Robert Robb, “Trump wants Republicans to defend him. But it's hard to defend the indefensible”, in The Arizona Republic
    • He does it because it establishes the primary deniability of "I was just trolling" when his lead balloons fail to go over2025 May 3, @itazurakko999, X

Forms of lead balloon

plurallead balloons

Origin of lead balloon

From go down like a lead balloon and similar expressions.

Questions about lead balloon

What does lead balloon mean?
Lead balloon means a failure, especially something that fails to have the intended resonance with an audience.
What part of speech is lead balloon?
Lead balloon is a noun.
What is the plural of lead balloon?
The plural of lead balloon is lead balloons.

Words near lead balloon in the dictionary

  1. Leacocks
  2. lead
  3. lead acetate
  4. lead around by the nose
  5. lead astray
  6. lead balloon
  7. lead balloons
  8. lead by example
  9. lead by the nose
  10. lead carbonate
  11. lead carbonates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lead balloon (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.

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Cite this entry: “lead balloon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lead_balloon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.