trip to the woodshed
trip to the woodshed noun: an occasion on which a reprimand or punishment is administered privately.
Noun
trip to the woodshed (plural trips to the woodshed)
- An occasion on which a reprimand or punishment is administered privately.
- More than a few of the 3,000 members of the National Association of Manufacturers, gathered for their annual convention in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last week, felt like small boys worrying about a trip to the woodshed. None knew how vindictive or friendly toward business the Truman...1948 December 13, “Sweet Reasonableness”, in Time
Forms of trip to the woodshed
| plural | trips to the woodshed |
|---|
Origin of trip to the woodshed
Probably derived from the previous term "horseshedding," meaning to take a person privately (such as to a horse shed or woodshed, separate buildings away from the house) for private cajoling or reprimand.
Questions about trip to the woodshed
- What does trip to the woodshed mean?
- Trip to the woodshed means an occasion on which a reprimand or punishment is administered privately.
- What part of speech is trip to the woodshed?
- Trip to the woodshed is a noun.
- What is the plural of trip to the woodshed?
- The plural of trip to the woodshed is trips to the woodshed.
Words near trip to the woodshed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: trip to the woodshed (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-trip to the woodshed.ogg.
Cite this entry: “trip to the woodshed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trip_to_the_woodshed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.