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Synonyms

bad trip

American  

noun

Slang.

  1. a mentally or physically horrifying drug-taking experience, as one accompanied by nightmarish hallucinations or by physical pain.

  2. a dismayingly unpleasant experience.

    He was so ill-prepared that college was a bad trip for him.
bad trip Idioms  

  1. A frightening or otherwise very unpleasant experience, as in Given the poor turnout, her book tour was a bad trip. The term comes from drug slang of the mid-1900s, where it meant experiencing hallucinations, pain, or other terrible effects from taking a drug, especially LSD. It was then extended to any extremely unpleasant experience.

Etymology

Origin of bad trip

First recorded in 1965–70

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.