"do nothing" meaning in All languages combined

See do nothing on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Forms: does nothing [present, singular, third-person], doing nothing [participle, present], did nothing [past], done nothing [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|do<does,,did,done> nothing}} do nothing (third-person singular simple present does nothing, present participle doing nothing, simple past did nothing, past participle done nothing)
  1. To not take any action; to fail to do or accomplish something.
    Sense id: en-do_nothing-en-verb-N6GqtXEd Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for do nothing meaning in All languages combined (1.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "does nothing",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "doing nothing",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "did nothing",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "done nothing",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "do<does,,did,done> nothing"
      },
      "expansion": "do nothing (third-person singular simple present does nothing, present participle doing nothing, simple past did nothing, past participle done nothing)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "That colour does nothing for him.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "The new zero tolerance rules did nothing to make the school safer and improve its atmosphere; in fact, these rules may have made the school less safe and less desirable instead.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 May 31, Nigel Harris, “GBR now! We have no Plan B”, in RAIL, number 984, page 3",
          "text": "But doing nothing is not an option. Our railway has been drifting, leaderless, for a couple of years. Sunak should also ponder as he panders.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To not take any action; to fail to do or accomplish something."
      ],
      "id": "en-do_nothing-en-verb-N6GqtXEd"
    }
  ],
  "word": "do nothing"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "does nothing",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "doing nothing",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "did nothing",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "done nothing",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "do<does,,did,done> nothing"
      },
      "expansion": "do nothing (third-person singular simple present does nothing, present participle doing nothing, simple past did nothing, past participle done nothing)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "That colour does nothing for him.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "The new zero tolerance rules did nothing to make the school safer and improve its atmosphere; in fact, these rules may have made the school less safe and less desirable instead.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 May 31, Nigel Harris, “GBR now! We have no Plan B”, in RAIL, number 984, page 3",
          "text": "But doing nothing is not an option. Our railway has been drifting, leaderless, for a couple of years. Sunak should also ponder as he panders.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To not take any action; to fail to do or accomplish something."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "do nothing"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.