"free lunch" meaning in All languages combined

See free lunch on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: en-au-free lunch.ogg [Australia] Forms: free lunches [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} free lunch (plural free lunches)
  1. (idiomatic) Something obtained without any payment, obligation or effort. Tags: idiomatic Derived forms: NFL, no free lunch theorem, there's no such thing as a free lunch Translations (Translations): gratis bier [neuter] (Dutch), darmowa rzecz [feminine] (Polish)

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "free lunches",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "free lunch (plural free lunches)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Entries with translation boxes",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Dutch translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Polish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "NFL"
        },
        {
          "word": "no free lunch theorem"
        },
        {
          "word": "there's no such thing as a free lunch"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              228,
              240
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1999 October 7, Joseph Yam, “A tribute to Philip Haddon-Cave”, in Hong Kong Monetary Authority, archived from the original on 01 Jul 2023:",
          "text": "He had also been under some pressure from up the hill (Murray MacLehose) to spend more, on social welfare, on public housing, on medical and health, on law and order — an endless list of highly desirable causes as well as a few free lunches.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something obtained without any payment, obligation or effort."
      ],
      "id": "en-free_lunch-en-noun-S62gYwSW",
      "links": [
        [
          "obtain",
          "obtain"
        ],
        [
          "payment",
          "payment"
        ],
        [
          "obligation",
          "obligation"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Something obtained without any payment, obligation or effort."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "lang_code": "nl",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "tags": [
            "neuter"
          ],
          "word": "gratis bier"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "lang_code": "pl",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "darmowa rzecz"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-free lunch.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/89/En-au-free_lunch.ogg/En-au-free_lunch.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/En-au-free_lunch.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "free lunch"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "NFL"
    },
    {
      "word": "no free lunch theorem"
    },
    {
      "word": "there's no such thing as a free lunch"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "free lunches",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "free lunch (plural free lunches)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Dutch translations",
        "Terms with Polish translations",
        "Translation table header lacks gloss"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              228,
              240
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1999 October 7, Joseph Yam, “A tribute to Philip Haddon-Cave”, in Hong Kong Monetary Authority, archived from the original on 01 Jul 2023:",
          "text": "He had also been under some pressure from up the hill (Murray MacLehose) to spend more, on social welfare, on public housing, on medical and health, on law and order — an endless list of highly desirable causes as well as a few free lunches.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something obtained without any payment, obligation or effort."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "obtain",
          "obtain"
        ],
        [
          "payment",
          "payment"
        ],
        [
          "obligation",
          "obligation"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Something obtained without any payment, obligation or effort."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-free lunch.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/89/En-au-free_lunch.ogg/En-au-free_lunch.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/En-au-free_lunch.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "lang_code": "nl",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "tags": [
        "neuter"
      ],
      "word": "gratis bier"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "lang_code": "pl",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "darmowa rzecz"
    }
  ],
  "word": "free lunch"
}

Download raw JSONL data for free lunch meaning in All languages combined (2.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-10-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). 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.