Aunt Sally
Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word Aunt Sally. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word Aunt Sally, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say Aunt Sally in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word Aunt Sally you have here. The definition of the word Aunt Sally will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofAunt Sally, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Etymology
Apparently after My Old Aunt Sally, the title of a blackface minstrel song written by Dan Emmett in 1843.
Proper noun
- A traditional game in which balls are thrown to break the pipe in the mouth of a figurine resembling an old woman.
- 1905 [1902], Edith Nesbit, chapter VIII, in Five Children and It, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, page 220:
- There were some swings, and a hooting-tooting blaring merry-go-round, and a shooting-gallery and Aunt Sallies.
- 1913, D H Lawrence, chapter I, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. , →OCLC:
- Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes. There were two sets of horses, one going by steam, one pulled round by a pony; three organs were grinding, and there came odd cracks of pistol-shots, fearful screeching of the cocoanut man's rattle, shouts of the Aunt Sally man, screeches from the peep-show lady.
- (figurative, chiefly UK) A figure drawing criticism or ridicule, especially when prejudiced or unwarranted.
- 1912 November 24, W. B. Maxwell, “The Future of the Novel”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
- But the novel is something more than a national institution; it has become the recognized channel of communication between the crank and his victims; it is the shooting gallery through which we fire our messages at that dear old Aunt Sally, the British Public.
- 1999, J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Vintage, page 95:
- He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron.
- 2008 June 26, “Manmohan Singh’s burning ambition”, in The Economist, →ISSN:
- IN FOUR years as India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh has come to resemble a bearded and turbaned Aunt Sally.