Word.ws English Dictionary

tall poppy syndrome

tall poppy syndrome noun: the tendency to criticize, resent, or disparage successful people.

Noun

tall poppy syndrome (uncountable)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand) The tendency to criticize, resent, or disparage successful people.
    • One of Australia′s healthiest national traits is the Tall Poppy Syndrome, which involves taking a sceptical view of people who are rich, powerful or successful, and cutting them down to size when they appear pretentious.1997, David Dale, The 100 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Australia, page 52
    • Interestingly, the media in the United States are least prone to the tall poppy syndrome, which is one of the many things I admire about America.2006, Greg Norman, The Way of the Shark, page 83

Examples of tall poppy syndrome in a sentence

  • For Allan Scott, one of the ironies of owning a media outlet or being a business success is he becomes a target for other media, a potential victim of the tall poppy syndrome.2007, Graham Greenwood, A Truckie′s Dream: The Allan Scott Story: His Official Biography, Australia: Wakefield Press, page 86:
  • The extracts coded as indicative of the tall poppy syndrome reflect the deeply rooted nature of this phenomenon, identified by Feather (1994a) and other researchers.2007, Neal M. Ashkanasy, “9: The Australian Enigma”, in Jagdeep Singh Chhokar, Robert J. House, Felix C. Brodbeck, editors, Culture and...
  • Speaking of bullying, a few years later in Society and Culture class I wrote an essay, agreeing with the statement that the tall poppy syndrome was alive and well in Australia.2008, Kristie Theobald, Irish Angels, Lulu, page 97:

Forms of tall poppy syndrome

alternative formtall-poppy syndrome

Origin of tall poppy syndrome

From tall poppy + syndrome.

Questions about tall poppy syndrome

What does tall poppy syndrome mean?
Tall poppy syndrome means the tendency to criticize, resent, or disparage successful people.
How do you use tall poppy syndrome in a sentence?
For Allan Scott, one of the ironies of owning a media outlet or being a business success is he becomes a target for other media, a potential victim of the tall poppy syndrome.
What part of speech is tall poppy syndrome?
Tall poppy syndrome is a noun.

Words near tall poppy syndrome in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tall poppy syndrome (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-tall poppy syndrome.ogg.

Cite this entry: “tall poppy syndrome.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tall_poppy_syndrome. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.