A booby prize is a joke prize usually given in recognition of a terrible performance or last-place finish. A person who finishes last, for example, may get a booby prize such as a worthless coin. Booby prizes are sometimes humorously and jokingly coveted as an object of pride.
Booby prizes, however, may not be given just to those who just have a terrible performance. At times, the term "booby prize" is used for a consolation prize given to all non-placing participants of a competition.
Famous quotes containing the word prize:
“It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)