See chown on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From the name of the program for this purpose, short for \"change owner\".",
"forms": [
{
"form": "chowns",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "chowning",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "chowned",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "chowned",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "chown (third-person singular simple present chowns, present participle chowning, simple past and past participle chowned)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Computing",
"orig": "en:Computing",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Unix",
"orig": "en:Unix",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2006, Eric Rosebrock, Eric Filson, Setting up LAMP (page 49)",
"text": "When chowning a file, simply use: chown flags username:groupname"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To change the owner of (a file or directory)."
],
"id": "en-chown-en-verb-CUia55mE",
"links": [
[
"computing",
"computing#Noun"
],
[
"Unix",
"Unix"
],
[
"change",
"change"
],
[
"owner",
"owner"
],
[
"file",
"file"
],
[
"directory",
"directory"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(computing, Unix, Linux, transitive) To change the owner of (a file or directory)."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "chmod"
}
],
"tags": [
"Unix",
"transitive"
],
"topics": [
"Linux",
"computing",
"engineering",
"mathematics",
"natural-sciences",
"physical-sciences",
"sciences",
"software"
]
}
],
"word": "chown"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From the name of the program for this purpose, short for \"change owner\".",
"forms": [
{
"form": "chowns",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "chowning",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "chowned",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "chowned",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "chown (third-person singular simple present chowns, present participle chowning, simple past and past participle chowned)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "chmod"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English transitive verbs",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:Computing",
"en:Unix"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2006, Eric Rosebrock, Eric Filson, Setting up LAMP (page 49)",
"text": "When chowning a file, simply use: chown flags username:groupname"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To change the owner of (a file or directory)."
],
"links": [
[
"computing",
"computing#Noun"
],
[
"Unix",
"Unix"
],
[
"change",
"change"
],
[
"owner",
"owner"
],
[
"file",
"file"
],
[
"directory",
"directory"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(computing, Unix, Linux, transitive) To change the owner of (a file or directory)."
],
"tags": [
"Unix",
"transitive"
],
"topics": [
"Linux",
"computing",
"engineering",
"mathematics",
"natural-sciences",
"physical-sciences",
"sciences",
"software"
]
}
],
"word": "chown"
}
Download raw JSONL data for chown meaning in All languages combined (1.4kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (d6fca27 and 65e1673). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.