Word.ws English Dictionary

nail Jell-O to a tree

nail Jell-O to a tree verb: to do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness.

Verb

nail Jell-O to a tree (third-person singular simple present nails Jell-O to a tree, present participle nailing Jell-O to a tree, simple past and past participle nailed Jell-O to a tree)

  1. (US, rare, slang) To do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness.
    • They are asking us to nail Jell-O to a tree if they insist on having everything done in three days.

Forms of nail Jell-O to a tree

third-person singular presentnails Jell-O to a tree
present participlenailing Jell-O to a tree
past participlenailed Jell-O to a tree
pastnailed Jell-O to a tree
alternative formnail Jell-O to a wall
alternative formnail jelly to a tree
alternative formnail jelly to a wall

Questions about nail Jell-O to a tree

What does nail Jell-O to a tree mean?
Nail Jell-O to a tree means to do something that is impossible or very difficult, with connotations of pointlessness.
What part of speech is nail Jell-O to a tree?
Nail Jell-O to a tree is a verb.
What is the past tense of nail Jell-O to a tree?
The past tense of nail Jell-O to a tree is nailed Jell-O to a tree.

Words near nail Jell-O to a tree in the dictionary

  1. nail header
  2. nail house
  3. nail houses
  4. nail in one's coffin
  5. nail it
  6. nail Jell-O to a tree
  7. nail Jell-O to a wall
  8. nail jelly to a wall
  9. nail keg
  10. nail kegs
  11. nail knot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nail Jell-O to a tree (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-nail Jell-O to a tree.ogg.

Cite this entry: “nail Jell-O to a tree.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nail_jell-o_to_a_tree. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.