Meaning of tall-poppy syndrome | Babel Free

Definitions

Noun. [B2]

Examples

“He [James Mollison] protects his person ferociously and about the wickedest question one could ask him, worse even than his opinion on ‘Blue Poles’, is where he went to school. Why? He won’t explain that either, offering only a general observation about the length of Memory Lane (“if I went down I’d never emerge”) and an oblique reference to the tall-poppy syndrome afflicting the Australian media. In an interview with art critic Robert Hughes some years ago, Mr Mollison said of the Press: “I suspect that they would like to put me up so that one day I can bring the gallery down and me with it.””

“What is it about the prime minister’s marriage that invites people to break that social rule about minding our own business? I don’t think there are easy answers to that. Certainly there’s the celebrity factor and the tall-poppy syndrome. When politicians put their happy families on display on the campaign trail or at events, there will inevitably be cynics who want to believe it’s all a facade, like so many other things in politics.”

““It’s easy to see it as some kind of tall-poppy syndrome in effect, but I don’t think it’s that,” said Charles Gant, awards editor of Screen International magazine. “Inception is a sci-fi action blockbuster, and not typically the kind of film Bafta [the British Academy of Film and Television Arts] clutches to its heart. Dunkirk lost to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in best film, and The Shape of Water’s Guillermo Del^([sic]) Toro in director. I’m not seeing an anti-Nolan prejudice here. The votes just went that way.””

CEFR level