tumbleweed moment
- noun
- /ˈtʌmbəlˌwiːd ˈmoʊmənt/
- Informal
:
silencio incómodo
- Her comment was followed by a tumbleweed moment as everyone looked away uncomfortably.
Examples
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After his joke fell flat, there was a tumbleweed moment in the room.
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There was a tumbleweed moment after he mentioned the failed project.
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Every joke that falls flat causes yet another tumbleweed moment in the meeting.
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That was a total tumbleweed moment!
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Her comment was followed by a tumbleweed moment as everyone looked away uncomfortably.
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Every joke that falls flat causes yet another tumbleweed moment in the meeting.
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After his joke fell flat, there was a tumbleweed moment in the room.
Synonyms
15
4.1
A short time when people feel uncomfortable or embarrassed
6
4.3
A tense pause in a conversation that makes people feel uncomfortable
How Awkward
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal parts ('tumbleweed' = a rolling plant, 'moment' = short interval) could suggest an empty or quiet instant, so there is a visible link to silence or emptiness. However, the idiomatic sense 'awkward/uncomfortable silence' relies on a cultural metaphor (tumbleweed imagery from Westerns) and pragmatic inference that many B1 learners may not have, making the meaning only partially predictable.
Etymology
The phrase tumbleweed moment comes from the image of a dry plant, the tumbleweed, rolling across an empty street in old cowboy movies. So when a joke or comment makes everyone go quiet, people picture that lonely street and call it a tumbleweed moment, meaning 'an awkward silence'.