"fine line" meaning in All languages combined

See fine line on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: en-au-fine line.ogg Forms: fine lines [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} fine line (plural fine lines)
  1. (idiomatic) A difference, albeit vague and difficult to discern. Tags: idiomatic Derived forms: walk a fine line Related terms: gray area Translations (Translations): häilyvä raja (Finnish), cienka linia [feminine] (Polish)

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fine lines",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "fine line (plural fine lines)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "antonyms": [
        {
          "word": "bright line"
        }
      ],
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Entries with translation boxes",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Polish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "walk a fine line"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1991, Steven Wright, Hysteria:",
          "text": "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 June 20, Steve Rose, quoting Terry Hill, “The men continuing Ove Arup's architectural vision”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "\"We're not arrogant, we're confident about what we're doing,\" says Hill, \"But there's a fine line between them, isn't there?\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 May 16, Katie Allen, “A fine line”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "San Francisco songsters The Richter Scales give the world their take on the subprime meltdown in a song that advises there's also a fine line \"between the theories and the facts\", \"between what's solid and what cracks\" and \"between a gain and a crippling, crushing, mortally wounding decline\".",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 January 13, Nick Haramis, “When Did We All Become Pop Culture Detectives?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "Harvesting Easter eggs is now integral to our consumption of entertainment. But there’s a fine line between perceptiveness and paranoia.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A difference, albeit vague and difficult to discern."
      ],
      "id": "en-fine_line-en-noun-tw~L8Xkj",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A difference, albeit vague and difficult to discern."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "gray area"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "häilyvä raja"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "cienka linia"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fine line.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/16/En-au-fine_line.ogg/En-au-fine_line.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/En-au-fine_line.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fine line"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "walk a fine line"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fine lines",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "fine line (plural fine lines)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "gray area"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "antonyms": [
        {
          "word": "bright line"
        }
      ],
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English rhyming phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "Terms with Finnish translations",
        "Terms with Polish translations",
        "Translation table header lacks gloss"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1991, Steven Wright, Hysteria:",
          "text": "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 June 20, Steve Rose, quoting Terry Hill, “The men continuing Ove Arup's architectural vision”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "\"We're not arrogant, we're confident about what we're doing,\" says Hill, \"But there's a fine line between them, isn't there?\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 May 16, Katie Allen, “A fine line”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "San Francisco songsters The Richter Scales give the world their take on the subprime meltdown in a song that advises there's also a fine line \"between the theories and the facts\", \"between what's solid and what cracks\" and \"between a gain and a crippling, crushing, mortally wounding decline\".",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 January 13, Nick Haramis, “When Did We All Become Pop Culture Detectives?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "Harvesting Easter eggs is now integral to our consumption of entertainment. But there’s a fine line between perceptiveness and paranoia.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A difference, albeit vague and difficult to discern."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A difference, albeit vague and difficult to discern."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fine line.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/16/En-au-fine_line.ogg/En-au-fine_line.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/En-au-fine_line.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "häilyvä raja"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "cienka linia"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fine line"
}

Download raw JSONL data for fine line 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 2024-12-15 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.