See before you can say knife on Wiktionary
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"examples": [
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"ref": "1893, Rudyard Kipling, “Judson and the Empire”, in Many Inventions:",
"text": "'Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.'",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1926, W. Somerset Maugham, “The Letter”, in More Far Eastern Tales, Random House, published 2010, →ISBN:",
"text": "‘Ginger, Ginger, before you can say knife she'll make you into a damned missionary.’ I don't know that I'd mind that so much if we had a little mission of our own.",
"type": "quote"
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],
"glosses": [
"Very quickly; quicker than one expects."
],
"id": "en-before_you_can_say_knife-en-phrase-Fe1lgyWD",
"links": [
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"quickly",
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"synonyms": [
{
"word": "before you can say Jack Robinson"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "ennen kuin ehdit kissaa sanoa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "en moins de temps qu’il ne faut pour le dire"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "ehe man sichs versieht"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "cât ai zice pește"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "\"máma\" skazátʹ ne uspéješʹ",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "\"ма́ма\" сказа́ть не успе́ешь"
},
{
"code": "gd",
"lang": "Scottish Gaelic",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "mun canadh tu deis-dè"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "en menos de lo que canta un gallo"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "innan man vet ordet av"
}
]
}
],
"word": "before you can say knife"
}
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"text": "'Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.'",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1926, W. Somerset Maugham, “The Letter”, in More Far Eastern Tales, Random House, published 2010, →ISBN:",
"text": "‘Ginger, Ginger, before you can say knife she'll make you into a damned missionary.’ I don't know that I'd mind that so much if we had a little mission of our own.",
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],
"glosses": [
"Very quickly; quicker than one expects."
],
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"quickly",
"quickly"
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],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "before you can say Jack Robinson"
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],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "ennen kuin ehdit kissaa sanoa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "en moins de temps qu’il ne faut pour le dire"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "ehe man sichs versieht"
},
{
"code": "ro",
"lang": "Romanian",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "cât ai zice pește"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "\"máma\" skazátʹ ne uspéješʹ",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "\"ма́ма\" сказа́ть не успе́ешь"
},
{
"code": "gd",
"lang": "Scottish Gaelic",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "mun canadh tu deis-dè"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "en menos de lo que canta un gallo"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "innan man vet ordet av"
}
],
"word": "before you can say knife"
}
Download raw JSONL data for before you can say knife meaning in All languages combined (2.4kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). 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.