Word.ws English Dictionary

monkey's paws

monkey's paws is the plural of monkey's paw.

Meaning of monkey's paw

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
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see monkey, paw.

Questions about monkey's paws

What is monkey's paws the plural of?
Monkey's paws is the plural of monkey's paw.

Words near monkey's paws in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monkey's paws (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “monkey's paws.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monkey%27s_paws. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.