a dose of the clap
- idiom
- Offensive
:
una mierda (vulgar)
- Hearing that tired old pun was like getting a dose of the clap—painful and best avoided.
Examples
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She rolled her eyes and said his jokes always landed like a dose of the clap.
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His latest stand-up routine was about as funny as a dose of the clap.
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That joke was just a dose of the clap!
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I can't believe he told a dose of the clap during the meeting.
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Hearing that tired old pun was like getting a dose of the clap—painful and best avoided.
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His latest stand-up routine was about as funny as a dose of the clap.
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She rolled her eyes and said his jokes always landed like a dose of the clap.
Synonyms
1
8.0
A joke that is so bad it makes people show annoyance
A very bad situation you must deal with
Antonyms
How Unpleasant
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'dose' + 'the clap' (where 'the clap' is gonorrhea) make a negative, unpleasant association that a learner who knows both words could partly infer — it evokes receiving an unwanted disease and thus something nasty. However the phrase is slang, metaphorical and pragmatically specific (used as an evaluative insult for something especially objectionable or unfunny), so the conventionalized meaning and register are not fully predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
A dose of the clap uses the word dose, meaning a small amount given to someone, and clap, old slang for a painful disease you can catch from sex. By comparing something to that bad experience, it means 'very unpleasant'.