"hit the fan" meaning in All languages combined

See hit the fan on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Audio: en-au-hit the fan.ogg Forms: hits the fan [present, singular, third-person], hitting the fan [participle, present], hit the fan [participle, past], hit the fan [past]
Etymology: Uncertain. Possibly derived from an old joke: A man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn't find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender, who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what had happened, the bartender replied, 'Where were you when the shit hit the fan?' Other possible sources include American/Canadian military slang or agricultural manure spreaders. Etymology templates: {{unc|en}} Uncertain Head templates: {{en-verb|hit<,,hit> the fan}} hit the fan (third-person singular simple present hits the fan, present participle hitting the fan, simple past and past participle hit the fan)
  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To have a dramatic, usually negative, effect. Tags: idiomatic, intransitive Related terms: shit show, shitstorm, shower of shit, shit happens
    Sense id: en-hit_the_fan-en-verb-7v5kafA- Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English predicates, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en"
      },
      "expansion": "Uncertain",
      "name": "unc"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Uncertain. Possibly derived from an old joke:\nA man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn't find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender, who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what had happened, the bartender replied, 'Where were you when the shit hit the fan?' Other possible sources include American/Canadian military slang or agricultural manure spreaders.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hits the fan",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hitting the fan",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hit the fan",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hit the fan",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "hit<,,hit> the fan"
      },
      "expansion": "hit the fan (third-person singular simple present hits the fan, present participle hitting the fan, simple past and past participle hit the fan)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English predicates",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They were just clowning around, when suddenly it all hit the fan.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "Then the shit really hit the fan.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 December 2, Neil Cavuto, “Interview With Jeff Flake”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
          "text": "Let me ask you, Congressman, the case of a lot of these corporate scandals, I followed enough of them to know how -- how it works out. Once everything starts hitting the fan, the CEO, the chairman or maybe a large share of the board of directors simply leaves, resigns",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To have a dramatic, usually negative, effect."
      ],
      "id": "en-hit_the_fan-en-verb-7v5kafA-",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, intransitive) To have a dramatic, usually negative, effect."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "shit show"
        },
        {
          "word": "shitstorm"
        },
        {
          "word": "shower of shit"
        },
        {
          "word": "shit happens"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-hit the fan.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a8/En-au-hit_the_fan.ogg/En-au-hit_the_fan.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/En-au-hit_the_fan.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hit the fan"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en"
      },
      "expansion": "Uncertain",
      "name": "unc"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Uncertain. Possibly derived from an old joke:\nA man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn't find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender, who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what had happened, the bartender replied, 'Where were you when the shit hit the fan?' Other possible sources include American/Canadian military slang or agricultural manure spreaders.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hits the fan",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hitting the fan",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hit the fan",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "hit the fan",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "hit<,,hit> the fan"
      },
      "expansion": "hit the fan (third-person singular simple present hits the fan, present participle hitting the fan, simple past and past participle hit the fan)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "shit show"
    },
    {
      "word": "shitstorm"
    },
    {
      "word": "shower of shit"
    },
    {
      "word": "shit happens"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English predicates",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with unknown etymologies",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They were just clowning around, when suddenly it all hit the fan.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "Then the shit really hit the fan.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 December 2, Neil Cavuto, “Interview With Jeff Flake”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
          "text": "Let me ask you, Congressman, the case of a lot of these corporate scandals, I followed enough of them to know how -- how it works out. Once everything starts hitting the fan, the CEO, the chairman or maybe a large share of the board of directors simply leaves, resigns",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To have a dramatic, usually negative, effect."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, intransitive) To have a dramatic, usually negative, effect."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-hit the fan.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a8/En-au-hit_the_fan.ogg/En-au-hit_the_fan.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/En-au-hit_the_fan.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hit the fan"
}

Download raw JSONL data for hit the fan meaning in All languages combined (2.6kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.