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Glite Dictionary
📺 A TV show 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 A cartoon family 🤖 Futuristic style
The Jetsons

The Jetsons

3 4.6
An American cartoon about a family living in a high-tech future
  • proper noun
  • /ðə ˈdʒɛtsənz/
: Los Jetsons
  • The seventh episode of The Jetsons aired in 1962, showcasing their futuristic home and lifestyle.

Examples

  • In The Jetsons, George Jetson often faced challenges at work due to the high-tech world around him.

  • I remember the Jetsons—

    Blog text (3)

  • I watched The Jetsons on TV, where the family would use flying cars and advanced gadgets.

Surface Forms

The Jetsons main

Morphology

the + Jetsons

This is a proper name referring to a specific animated TV family, so its meaning as shorthand for a futuristic, high-technology lifestyle depends on cultural/world knowledge of the show rather than compositional inference from the parts. Even if a learner knows 'jet' or the definite article 'the', they cannot reliably derive the idiomatic association with a high-tech future, so the expression is opaque to B1 learners.

Etymology

The Jetsons is the title of an old cartoon about a family living in a shiny, high-tech future with flying cars and robot helpers. That's why the name now makes people think of a picture of a 'futuristic world'.