Darwin Award
- noun
- /ˈdɑrwɪn əˈwɔrd/
- Offensive
:
Premio Darwin
- Her reckless stunt at the cliff dive led to a Darwin Award for proving how not to behave around dangerous animals.
Examples
-
He posthumously received a Darwin Award for trying to steal a shark by jumping into its tank.
-
Left liberals and other low-character Chicago Values types will be Darwin Award roadkill when their Cloward-Piven instigated societal collapse comes.
Blog text (3) -
Another candidate for the Darwin Award.
Blog text (3) -
Obviously, it won't be long before she adds a Darwin Award to her trophy case.
Blog text (3) -
The man's ill-fated decision to take selfies with wild bears earned him a Darwin Award after his untimely demise.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a tongue-in-cheek posthumous prize for people who die through exceptionally foolish actions' cannot be derived from the literal constituents 'Darwin' (a scientist's name) and 'award' (a prize); it is an ironic, culture-specific coinage. Interpreting it requires knowledge of the joke about Darwin/being 'removed from the gene pool' and the cultural concept of the Darwin Awards, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words would not reliably infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Darwin Award comes from jokes about Charles Darwin, the scientist who said that living things change over time. People started giving a mock 'award' online to anyone who died doing a very foolish thing and thus 'removed themselves from the gene pool', so the name now means a dark, joking prize for deadly stupidity.
