Meaning

6 senses

  1. (slang)A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.

  2. A stalemate, or a confrontation among two or more sides that no side can win.

    (slang)An inconclusive standoff, ending in mutual retreat.

  3. (slang)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).

  4. (slang)A three-way or more standoff.

  5. (slang)A pot that is split among the players because of a tie.

  6. A near-collision between two trains; an averted cornfield meet.

More definitions
  • a situation in which no one can emerge as a clear winner

Examples

1 sentences

  1. The political landscape of the region turned into a Mexican standoff.

    CC BY 2.0 FR · Tatoeba · soliloquist · C1Open on TatoebaReport a problem

Origin

First use appears c. 1876 in the US. Three-way gun standoffs, popularized in spaghetti wes

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.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: Mexican standoffs

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
mettlemewmhmmiamicmica
Mexican standoff — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto