Dictionary

Mexican standoff en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

First use appears c. 1876 in the US. Three-way gun standoffs, popularized in spaghetti westerns such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), have come to be called Mexican standoffs, though this usage appears to date to the 1990s, notably in reference to Reservoir Dogs (1992); earlier usage refers to this as a three-way standoff or triangular standoff.

Meanings

1. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.
   • “Go-!” said he sternly then. “We will call it a stand-off, a Mexican stand-off, you lose your money, but you save your life!” 1876 March 19, F. Harvey Smith, “Mexican Stand-Off”, in Sunday Mercury, New York, page 2/col. 5:
   • ‘Monk’ Cline, who got a Mexican stand-off from Dave Rowe has signed with Louisville. John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “Mexican standoff”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.
2. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win. ▸ An inconclusive standoff, ending in mutual retreat.
3. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win. ▸ A confrontation among two or more armed parties, none of which wants to attack first (fearing that the other could retaliate), but neither of which will disarm (for fear the other will attack).
   • “Either way you want it,” says Babbs, grinning in the most frightening manner now, like the next step is eight karate chops to the gizzards and giblets. Suddenly it is a Mexican standoff—with both sides glaring but nobody swinging a punch yet. 1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →OCLC, page 255:
4. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win. ▸ A three-way or more standoff.
   • Looks like we got us a Mexican Standoff. 1994, Quentin Tarantino, David Veloz, Natural Born Killers, spoken by Mickey (Woody Harrelson):
   • [About Reservoir Dogs] In this scene, and in the three-way shootout, a Mexican standoff, the extreme, almost operatic violence is grazed with black comedy 1999, Foster Hirsch, Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-noir, page 259:
5. (slang) A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win. ▸ A pot that is split among the players because of a tie.
6. A near-collision between two trains; an averted cornfield meet.

Forms

Relateds

circular firing squad

wikipedia: Reservoir Dogs · wikipedia: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly