Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A small, heavy, often decorative object that is placed on loose papers to hold them down.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small heavy object used to lay on loose papers to keep them from being scattered; especially, one made for the purpose and somewhat decorative, as a slab or marble, a plate of glass, or the like, with or without a bronze or other figure to serve as a handle, or a mass of glass decorated with various objects inclosed in it, and the like.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun See under
paper , n.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A small, decorative, somewhat
weighty (and now, highly collectable) object placed on one or more pieces of paper to keep them from fluttering away. - noun Any object for this purpose.
- noun slang An otherwise useless piece of equipment.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a weight used to hold down a stack of papers
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The technical knowledge, training and expertise of a politician, as it relates to computers, software, licensing, or anything more complex than a paperweight, is basically that of a 6 year old child.
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Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.
Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949
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From that point on, the card has been a "paperweight" - literally-and those treasured photos were completely lost.
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The paperweight is a great little something for father's day.
xml's Blinklist.com 2008
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I find it interesting that 'paperweight' takes on the assertion that my pride in my caucasian heritage (Do you ask Latinos to define specifically which form of Latino pride they are partaking - Mexican, Cuban, etc.?) is 'purely a race-based assertion of superiority or merely' fear of losing a position of privilege '... exemplifying the bias that always seems to accompany any notion of' white pride '.
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Ten million and you have a ubiquitous communications network into which your "paperweight" is now a hugely valuable doorway.
The Public Domain Enclosing the Commons of the Mind James Boyle
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He swallowed down the rising inclination to be classical at the expense of good taste, and engulfed, on the top of it, as a kind of paperweight, a vast tumblerful of red Nepenthe wine.
South Wind Norman Douglas 1910
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The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
Nineteen Eighty-four 2008
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The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
Nineteen Eighty-four 2008
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Derry's hand lay on it, a "paperweight" that did not move itself off at Blair's motion.
The Boy Patriot Edward Sylvester Ellis 1878
Comments
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