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 parades
  2. monkey patch
  3. monkey patched
  4. monkey patches
  5. monkey patching
  6. monkey paw
  7. monkey paws
  8. monkey pod
  9. monkey pods
  10. monkey points
  11. monkey pole

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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “monkey paw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monkey_paw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.