Word.ws English Dictionary

monkey-paw

monkey-paw is the alternative form 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.

Forms of monkey-paw

pluralmonkey-paws

Questions about monkey-paw

What is monkey-paw the alternative form of?
Monkey-paw is the alternative form of monkey's paw.

Words near monkey-paw in the dictionary

  1. monkey-no-climb
  2. monkey-patch
  3. monkey-patched
  4. monkey-patches
  5. monkey-patching
  6. monkey-paw
  7. monkey-paws
  8. monkey-pox
  9. monkey-puzzle
  10. monkey-puzzles
  11. monkey-shine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monkey-paw (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-paw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monkey-paw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.