See fly on the wall on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "flies on the wall",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
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"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "flies on the wall"
},
"expansion": "fly on the wall (plural flies on the wall)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "1918 August 9, “Clark Would Draft Even Men of 68”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-10-28, page 11:",
"text": "James W. Gerard, ex-Ambassador to Germany, the first speaker of the evening, said that at that moment he would like to be a fly on the wall of the palace at Potsdam to hear what the Potsdam gang were saying about our soldiers.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1979 February 3, Jil Clark, quoting Margareth Miller, “Major Court Decision Allows Lesbian Mother to Retain Custody”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 27, page 1:",
"text": "I wish I'd been a little fly on his chamber wall when he found out that he had to go through the Michigan Child Custody Act!",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"id": "en-fly_on_the_wall-en-noun-rWCVVNdf",
"links": [
[
"quiet",
"quiet"
],
[
"non-",
"non-"
],
[
"participating",
"participating"
],
[
"observer",
"observer"
],
[
"eavesdropper",
"eavesdropper"
],
[
"witness",
"witness"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på væggen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "kärpänen katossa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "petite souris"
},
{
"code": "de",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "Mäuschen"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på veggen"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "fluge på veggen"
},
{
"code": "es",
"english": "hole in the wall",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "agujero en la pared"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "fluga på väggen"
}
]
}
],
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"word": "fly on the wall"
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"tags": [
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"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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{
"ref": "1918 August 9, “Clark Would Draft Even Men of 68”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-10-28, page 11:",
"text": "James W. Gerard, ex-Ambassador to Germany, the first speaker of the evening, said that at that moment he would like to be a fly on the wall of the palace at Potsdam to hear what the Potsdam gang were saying about our soldiers.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1979 February 3, Jil Clark, quoting Margareth Miller, “Major Court Decision Allows Lesbian Mother to Retain Custody”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 27, page 1:",
"text": "I wish I'd been a little fly on his chamber wall when he found out that he had to go through the Michigan Child Custody Act!",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"links": [
[
"quiet",
"quiet"
],
[
"non-",
"non-"
],
[
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"participating"
],
[
"observer",
"observer"
],
[
"eavesdropper",
"eavesdropper"
],
[
"witness",
"witness"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
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],
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"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på væggen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "kärpänen katossa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "petite souris"
},
{
"code": "de",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "Mäuschen"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på veggen"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "fluge på veggen"
},
{
"code": "es",
"english": "hole in the wall",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "agujero en la pared"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "fluga på väggen"
}
],
"word": "fly on the wall"
}
Download raw JSONL data for fly on the wall meaning in All languages combined (3.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (f90d964 and 9dbd323). 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.