Word.ws English Dictionary

tall poppies

tall poppies is the plural of tall poppy.

Meaning of tall poppy

Noun

tall poppy (plural tall poppies)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand) A conspicuously successful person, especially one who attracts envious hostility.
    • Like many thriving, young Australian execs, Simpson has to be wary of being construed a “tall poppy,” a cultural label placed on people who flaunt their success, based on the idea that a poppy taller than the others gets chopped down.1999 June 1, Polly Schneider, Australia Unbound, CIO, page 43
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see tall, poppy.

Questions about tall poppies

What is tall poppies the plural of?
Tall poppies is the plural of tall poppy.

Words near tall poppies in the dictionary

  1. tall orders
  2. tall pawn
  3. tall pawns
  4. tall pocosin
  5. tall pocosins
  6. tall poppies
  7. tall poppy
  8. tall poppy syndrome
  9. tall reed
  10. tall reeds
  11. tall s

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tall poppies (page history and authors); tall poppy (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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