See parish-pump on Wiktionary
{
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"etymology_text": "From parish + pump, the attributive form of parish pump, alluding to its use as a place where members of a parish meet and talk to each other.",
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"text": "parish pump politics parish-pump squabbles",
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"ref": "[1875?], Thomas Bardel Brindley, chapter I, in Hints, Humorous and Satirical, to All the World and His Wife. […], 3rd edition, London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. […], →OCLC, paragraph 7, page 6:",
"text": "Never avoid bars or smoke-rooms, because in the former case you miss the chance of marrying a flirt, and in the latter of having your mind improved by local parish-pump politics, and your head broken by a fool in his cups.",
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"ref": "1952 March 19 (date delivered), Victor Purcell, quoting Gerald Templer, “The Case for the Governments”, in Malaya: Communist or Free?, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, published 1954, →OCLC, page 189:",
"text": "I now turn to the question of political progress. Ten days or so ago I was criticized in a newspaper for saying that I would confine political progress to the parish-pump level. […] I believe it right to ensure that truly responsible local government at the rural community and Municipal Council levels is firmly established and as quickly as possible.",
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"ref": "1978, Graham Greene, chapter I, in The Human Factor, London; Sydney, N.S.W.: The Bodley Head, published 1979, →ISBN, page 14:",
"text": "I don't think I've voted once since the war. The issues nowadays so often seem—well, a bit parish pump.",
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"ref": "1985, P[eter] M[ichael] Jones, “Introduction”, in Politics and Rural Society: The Southern Massif Central c. 1750–1880, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 5:",
"text": "This study […] pays serious attention to so called parish-pump conflicts in the belief that they performed a fundamental role in shaping opinion in the countryside. The vitality of parish pump alignments had a temporal dimension, too, for it seems that the querulousness of the rural community expressed a developing perception of equilibrium and well-being.",
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"text": "The idea of \"parish-pump politics\" is well known. Instead of engaging in problem solving at the community level, local politicians often think only of their own, local community, even if it is much more reasonable to cooperate with neighbouring communities and to pursue common regional interests.",
"type": "quote"
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"glosses": [
"Of local interest or significance only; petty, parochial."
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"id": "en-parish-pump-en-adj-9j3Fy9TI",
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"(UK, often politics, dated, derogatory, figurative) Of local interest or significance only; petty, parochial."
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},
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]
},
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"note": "Mary–marry–merry merger",
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"General-American"
]
},
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"etymology_text": "From parish + pump, the attributive form of parish pump, alluding to its use as a place where members of a parish meet and talk to each other.",
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"ref": "[1875?], Thomas Bardel Brindley, chapter I, in Hints, Humorous and Satirical, to All the World and His Wife. […], 3rd edition, London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. […], →OCLC, paragraph 7, page 6:",
"text": "Never avoid bars or smoke-rooms, because in the former case you miss the chance of marrying a flirt, and in the latter of having your mind improved by local parish-pump politics, and your head broken by a fool in his cups.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
159,
170
]
],
"ref": "1952 March 19 (date delivered), Victor Purcell, quoting Gerald Templer, “The Case for the Governments”, in Malaya: Communist or Free?, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, published 1954, →OCLC, page 189:",
"text": "I now turn to the question of political progress. Ten days or so ago I was criticized in a newspaper for saying that I would confine political progress to the parish-pump level. […] I believe it right to ensure that truly responsible local government at the rural community and Municipal Council levels is firmly established and as quickly as possible.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
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91,
102
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"ref": "1978, Graham Greene, chapter I, in The Human Factor, London; Sydney, N.S.W.: The Bodley Head, published 1979, →ISBN, page 14:",
"text": "I don't think I've voted once since the war. The issues nowadays so often seem—well, a bit parish pump.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
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[
51,
62
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181,
192
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"ref": "1985, P[eter] M[ichael] Jones, “Introduction”, in Politics and Rural Society: The Southern Massif Central c. 1750–1880, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 5:",
"text": "This study […] pays serious attention to so called parish-pump conflicts in the belief that they performed a fundamental role in shaping opinion in the countryside. The vitality of parish pump alignments had a temporal dimension, too, for it seems that the querulousness of the rural community expressed a developing perception of equilibrium and well-being.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
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13,
24
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"ref": "2016, Michael Böcher, Max Krott, “Case Studies”, in Eduardo Fargas, editor, Science Makes the World Go Round: Successful Scientific Knowledge Transfer for the Environment, [Cham, Zug, Switzerland]: Springer Nature, →DOI, →ISBN, page 62:",
"text": "The idea of \"parish-pump politics\" is well known. Instead of engaging in problem solving at the community level, local politicians often think only of their own, local community, even if it is much more reasonable to cooperate with neighbouring communities and to pursue common regional interests.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Of local interest or significance only; petty, parochial."
],
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"(UK, often politics, dated, derogatory, figurative) Of local interest or significance only; petty, parochial."
],
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},
{
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"tags": [
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},
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"note": "Mary–marry–merry merger",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
},
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"word": "parish-pump"
}
Download raw JSONL data for parish-pump meaning in All languages combined (5.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-06-01 using wiktextract (074e7de and f1c2b61). 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.