Idiom
kangaroo court
Meaning
A judicial or quasi-judicial proceeding, or a group of people which conducts such proceedings, which is without proper authority, and often acts abusively or decides unjustly.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The trial was a kangaroo court and everyone knew it.”
“The committee had no real power to punish him, so he dismissed it as a kangaroo court.”
“The angry neighbors organized a kangaroo court in the park to blame the gardener for the broken fence before he could even explain what happened.”
“Convicted by a kangaroo court of wartime traitors, the dissident poet was exiled before dawn without ever seeing a real judge.”
Examples
simple
“The trial was a kangaroo court and everyone knew it.”
contextual
“The committee had no real power to punish him, so he dismissed it as a kangaroo court.”
“The angry neighbors organized a kangaroo court in the park to blame the gardener for the broken fence before he could even explain what happened.”
complex
“Convicted by a kangaroo court of wartime traitors, the dissident poet was exiled before dawn without ever seeing a real judge.”
Origin
From kangaroo + court. The etymology is uncertain; it has been suggested that the term draws a comparison between the leaping of a kangaroo and one of the following: * The 19th-century practice of itinerant judges moving from place to place on the American frontier and trying cases speedily and perfunctorily in order to get paid. * The use of irregular courts during the California Gold Rush (1848–1855) to decide claims of “jumping” (illegally occupying) mining claims. * The notion that a kangaroo court jumps to conclusions.
Key words
Related idioms
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