object lesson

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word object lesson. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word object lesson, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say object lesson in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word object lesson you have here. The definition of the word object lesson will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofobject lesson, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Noun

object lesson (plural object lessons)

  1. A lesson taught (especially to young children) using a familiar or unusual object as a focus.
  2. An example from real life that explains a principle or teaches a lesson.
    • 2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, page 107:
      Vertebrates are limited to two eyes each, but the variations they have played on this plain vanilla starting point are an object lesson in how much can be made from a little.
  3. Anything used as an example or lesson which serves to warn others as to the outcomes that result from a particular action or behavior, as exemplified by the fates of those who followed that course.
    Let that be an object lesson to him.
    • 2021 December 1, “Network News: Integrated Rail Plan: Osborne predicts HS2 eastern leg will return”, in RAIL, number 945, page 8:
      Of the announcement, Osborne said: "They have spent a hundred billion pounds of public money and they've got a massive raspberry from everyone as far as I can see. As a PR exercise, it's been an object lesson in how not to make a government announcement."
    • 2022 March 17, Paul Krugman, “Another Dictator Is Having a Bad Year”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
      Yet China, like Russia, is now giving us an object lesson in the usefulness of having an open society, where strongmen don’t get to invent their own reality.
    • 2022 October 25, Derek Thompson, “How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe”, in The Atlantic:
      The U.K. is now an object lesson for other countries dealing with a dark triad of deindustrialization, degrowth, and denigration of foreigners.
    • 2023 June 30, Marina Hyde, “The tide is coming in fast on Rishi Sunak – and it’s full of sewage”, in The Guardian:
      Thames Water has become the latest object lesson in the predictable and predicted folly of privatised monopolies, aided by a regulator that’s an even bigger wet wipe than the fatbergs bunging up the sewers.

Translations

See also

References