Word.ws English Dictionary

pin the tail on the donkey

pin the tail on the donkey noun: a children's game involving pinning a piece of material on a specified spot while blindfolded.

Noun

pin the tail on the donkey (uncountable)

  1. A children's game involving pinning a piece of material on a specified spot while blindfolded.
  2. (broadly) Any attempt to aim something somewhere while handicapped in doing so.
    • Without it, you may as well be playing pin the tail on the donkey with your marketing efforts.2001, David F. D'Alessandro, Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand, McGraw-Hill Professional, →ISBN, page 35

Questions about pin the tail on the donkey

What does pin the tail on the donkey mean?
Pin the tail on the donkey means a children's game involving pinning a piece of material on a specified spot while blindfolded.
What part of speech is pin the tail on the donkey?
Pin the tail on the donkey is a noun.

Words near pin the tail on the donkey in the dictionary

  1. pin setters
  2. pin setting
  3. pin squat
  4. pin squats
  5. pin the meter
  6. pin the tail on the donkey
  7. pin up
  8. pin-brained
  9. pin-cushion
  10. pin-cushioned
  11. pin-cushioning

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pin the tail on the donkey (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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