Word.ws English Dictionary

Rip Van Winkle

/ˌrɪp van ˈwɪŋk(ə)l/

Rip Van Winkle proper noun: a Dutch-American villager who falls asleep for 20 years and wakes up to a changed world, having missed the American Revolution; (by extension) someone or something stuck in the past.

Proper noun

Rip Van Winkle

  1. (US) A Dutch-American villager who falls asleep for 20 years and wakes up to a changed world, having missed the American Revolution; (by extension) someone or something stuck in the past.
    • That is, it makes a lot of sense to see Biden’s problems getting his plans across the finish line as being caused by the Rip Van Winkle caucus, Democrats who checked out intellectually a couple of decades ago and haven’t caught up with America as it now is.2021 September 27, Paul Krugman, “Biden Versus the Rip Van Winkle Caucus”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    • The characters do seem Rip Van Winkle-like, as they stumble upon and blink in amazement at very unsurprising things. “Wow! Instagram? Podcasts?” marvels Miranda at some of Carrie’s latest endeavors, as if these were edgy new enterprises.2022 January 5, Rhonda Garelick, “Middle Age Doesn’t Happen ‘Just Like That’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Origin of Rip Van Winkle

From The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent by Washington Irving (1819).

Words formed from Rip Van Winkle

Questions about Rip Van Winkle

What does Rip Van Winkle mean?
Rip Van Winkle means a Dutch-American villager who falls asleep for 20 years and wakes up to a changed world, having missed the American Revolution; (by extension) someone or something stuck in the past.
What part of speech is Rip Van Winkle?
Rip Van Winkle is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Rip Van Winkle?
Rip Van Winkle is pronounced /ˌrɪp van ˈwɪŋk(ə)l/.

Words near Rip Van Winkle in the dictionary

  1. rip to shreds
  2. RIP troll
  3. RIP trolling
  4. RIP trolls
  5. rip up
  6. Rip Van Winkle
  7. Rip Van Winkleish
  8. Rip Van Winklesque
  9. rip, shit or bust
  10. rip-and-reader
  11. rip-and-readers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Rip Van Winkle (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: “Rip Van Winkle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rip_van_winkle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.