quote unquote
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
quote + unquote, a spoken equivalent of air quotes, used to express satire, sarcasm, irony or euphemism, analogous to scare quotes in print.
Pronunciation[edit]
- IPA(key): /kwəʊt ʌnkwəʊt/
- IPA(key): /kwəʊt ɒnkwəʊt/ (common but proscribed, corresponding to the misspelling pronounciation)
Audio (AU) (file)
Adjective[edit]
- (idiomatic) Emphasizes the following (or sometimes preceding) word or phrase for irony, or marks it as not the normal sense of the term. Used almost exclusively in spoken language. In written language, quotation marks would be used instead.
- Synonyms: so-called, supposed
- Maybe you should ask your quote unquote friend what happened to the money.
- 1997 August 18, New York, page 38:
- `We're a young quote-unquote club. [...] In time, it will become a club.'
- 2022 April 13, Ryan Bort, “The Real Reason Republicans Are Loading Their 2022 Campaign Ads With Guns”, in Rolling Stone[1]:
- “Brandishing weapons and leaning into gun culture is viewed as revolutionary, and by revolutionary I mean, in their minds, the most virtuous sense, as defenders of quote unquote America,” he says.
Translations[edit]
Emphasize the following word or phrase for irony
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Adverb[edit]
- Used in spoken language to delimit a quotation in the same function as quotation marks.
- Synonyms: quote, quote end quote
- Adam Smith claimed that a capitalist is, quote, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention, unquote.
- 2004, “I Don't Believe You”, performed by The Magnetic Fields:
- So you quote love unquote me / Well, stranger things have come to be