Word.ws English Dictionary

nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people

nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people proverb: americans, as a group, do not have good taste or sophistication and can be easily amused or distracted to produce financial benefit for someone.

Proverb

nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people

  1. Americans, as a group, do not have good taste or sophistication and can be easily amused or distracted to produce financial benefit for someone.
    • “I remembered that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, so I set out to write the worst novel it was humanly possible to write and still get published,” he said.1982 June 13, Edwin McDowell, “About Books and Authors”, in New York Times, retrieved 13 Sep 2015

Forms of nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people

alternative formnobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public
alternative formno one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people

Origin of nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people

Widely attributed to American author and social critic H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) but not found in his published works, so the source and original form of this expression are not known with certainty.

Questions about nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people

What does nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people mean?
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people means americans, as a group, do not have good taste or sophistication and can be easily amused or distracted to produce financial benefit for someone.
What part of speech is nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people?
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people is a proverb.

Words near nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people in the dictionary

  1. nobody crabs
  2. nobody ever went broke underestimating the good taste of the American people
  3. nobody ever went broke underestimating the good taste of the American public
  4. nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
  5. nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public
  6. nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people
  7. nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public
  8. nobody'd
  9. nobody's
  10. nobody's fool
  11. nobody's fools

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people (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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