foot-in-mouth disease en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
- [ˈɸʊɾ-] (General-American)
- /- dɪzˈiz/ (General-American)
- (US) audio
- /ˈfʊɾ.ɪnˌmaʊθ dəzˈiz/ (General-American)
Etymology
Humorous conflation of foot-and-mouth disease and put one's foot in one's mouth.
Meanings
-
(humorous, idiomatic, uncountable) A tendency to make remarks that are embarrassingly wrong or inappropriate.
Maybe you suffer from foot-in-mouth disease, too, at least occasionally. If so, then I expect you've also learned about the remedy.
2004, Craig Jutila, 2-Minute Encouragers for Teachers, page 48:They attempt to straddle all issues and, consequently, when a slip occurs, the result is foot-in-mouth disease.
2000, Marvin Rubinstein, Net-wit.com:
Translations (3)
fi tapa möläyttää (tendency) · de but see von einem Fettnäpfchen ins Nächste treten (tendency) · cmn 口不擇言 /口不择言 (tendency)