It's from a time when it was common to offer cigars as rewards for playing carnival games. If you missed the target or milk can or whatever, "close, but no cigar!".

I have watched A Few Good Men to guess what it means . I forgot what it meant though.

like urban dictionary?

thank you all!

It's an expression to say "close but no cigar" if you try something but don't get it. The "cigar" would be what you smoke after a victory.

I am working on a project to define phrases in English like "close, but no cigar".

Here's the page for this phrase: http://jargonism.com/words/437

I would be interested to hear feedback from HN on what would be useful on the word page, in addition to a definition and an example?

That's cool. If you could add this, I always like to know the origin of the phrase.

Allegedly, according to Wiktionary:

> From the practice of giving cigars as prizes at carnivals in the US in the 19th century; this phrase would be said to those who failed to win a prize.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll start adding phrase origins to the site.

Why do I need to sign up and confirm a newsletter to view the site?

You are right. It is not a good user experience. I just took off the newsletter sign up.

Here you go: http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/close,_but_no_cigar