Word.ws English Dictionary

monkey's paw

monkey's paw noun: a situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences.

Noun

monkey's paw (plural monkey's paws)

  1. (attributive, idiomatic, usually) A situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences.
    • It’s given me everything I thought I wanted – riches, lucre, affluence, having lots of money, and being very wealthy – but with monkey’s-paw precision it’s turned all my dreams against me.2015 October 19, Sam Kriss with Thom Phipps, “Who really ever owns a tweet? The story of a 140-character message gone viral, and the man who stole it”, in The Daily Telegraph
    • It’s a monkey’s paw of a legacy, to have birthed an immortal gastronomic titan but not to have attained immortality of one’s own.2017 October 11, Helen Rosner, “What Le Cirque Will Be Remembered For”, in The New Yorker
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see monkey, paw.

Forms of monkey's paw

pluralmonkey's paws
alternative formmonkey paw
alternative formmonkey-paw

Origin of monkey's paw

From the 1902 short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, in which a mummified monkey's paw is enchanted to grant a family three wishes, but with terrible consequences for them. Popularised by a segment based on Jacobs' story in the 1991 episode "Treehouse of Horror II" of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons.

Questions about monkey's paw

What does monkey's paw mean?
Monkey's paw means a situation in which a wish or desire has been fulfilled, but at significant cost or with ironic, usually unfavourable consequences.
What part of speech is monkey's paw?
Monkey's paw is a noun.
What is the plural of monkey's paw?
The plural of monkey's paw is monkey's paws.

Words near monkey's paw in the dictionary

  1. monkey's bread
  2. monkey's breads
  3. monkey's dinner bell
  4. monkey's fist
  5. monkey's fists
  6. monkey's paw
  7. monkey's paws
  8. monkey's pistol
  9. monkey's wedding
  10. monkey-ass
  11. monkey-branch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monkey's paw (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-monkey's paw.wav.

Cite this entry: “monkey's paw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monkey%27s_paw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.