First recorded in 1800–10
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He rates a podcaster below “movies, TV, recording artist, radio personality, mime and organ grinder monkey.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2024
He cranks the handle like an organ grinder and more nuggets of phosphate issue forth.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 3, 2022
There are memories, too -- the triptych “Beginnings” is a personal compendium of defining childhood influences -- an organ grinder, an upside-down Puss in Boots, a globe showing America and an art-loving uncle.
From BusinessWeek ● Dec. 9, 2011
Finally he stumbles on a shabby organ grinder standing barefoot on the frozen ground with dogs snarling at him.
From Slate ● Nov. 29, 2011
It was a monkey and an organ grinder.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
“We didn’t allow ourselves to think that. The prevailing attitude was, We’re organ-grinder monkeys. Message be damned, our main focus was the finding the shortest route to the funniest joke.”
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 26, 2016
She met an organ-grinder and salesmen with various tourist trinkets, and then she stopped at a stall selling Soviet memorabilia – all these fur hats with stars and figures of Stalin.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 11, 2016
So you still think of Verdi as a purveyor of organ-grinder accompaniments?
From Chicago Tribune ● Apr. 17, 2011
And what made it worse, along came Dad, and he started to chatter Neapolitan with the organ-grinder….
From New York Times ● Aug. 2, 2010
The monkeys that are used in laboratories are not organ-grinder monkeys.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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.
