"perish the thought" meaning in All languages combined

See perish the thought on Wiktionary

Phrase [English]

Etymology: Equivalent to "[may] the thought perish", with the verb in the subjunctive mood followed by its subject. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} perish the thought
  1. May the thought perish; said of an idea or suggestion that is deeply undesirable. Related terms: far be it
    Sense id: en-perish_the_thought-en-phrase-xJxqHMEG Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English sentences, English subjunctive expressions, Pages with 1 entry
{
  "etymology_text": "Equivalent to \"[may] the thought perish\", with the verb in the subjunctive mood followed by its subject.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "perish the thought",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "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 sentences",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English subjunctive expressions",
          "parents": [
            "Subjunctive expressions",
            "Terms by semantic function"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1885, Horatio Alger, chapter 13, in Hector's Inheritance",
          "text": "What! was he to lose his hold over these boys, and that because he was unable to cope with a boy much smaller and younger than himself? Perish the thought!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 June 22, Grace Dent, The Guardian, G2, p. 3",
          "text": "According to industry gossips, Richard and Judy may soon go their separate ways. Not maritally; no, perish the thought.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "May the thought perish; said of an idea or suggestion that is deeply undesirable."
      ],
      "id": "en-perish_the_thought-en-phrase-xJxqHMEG",
      "links": [
        [
          "undesirable",
          "undesirable#English"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "far be it"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "perish the thought"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Equivalent to \"[may] the thought perish\", with the verb in the subjunctive mood followed by its subject.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "perish the thought",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "far be it"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English sentences",
        "English subjunctive expressions",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1885, Horatio Alger, chapter 13, in Hector's Inheritance",
          "text": "What! was he to lose his hold over these boys, and that because he was unable to cope with a boy much smaller and younger than himself? Perish the thought!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 June 22, Grace Dent, The Guardian, G2, p. 3",
          "text": "According to industry gossips, Richard and Judy may soon go their separate ways. Not maritally; no, perish the thought.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "May the thought perish; said of an idea or suggestion that is deeply undesirable."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "undesirable",
          "undesirable#English"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "perish the thought"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-09-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-08-20 using wiktextract (8e41825 and f99c758). 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.