See greased lightning on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Believed to come from the observation that greased machinery tends to run faster, and the notion that if a lightning strike (the fastest normally observed movement) could be greased, it might move even faster. Originally US usage, but soon well known in UK due to Thackeray's use in 1848 (see cite).",
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"expansion": "greased lightning (uncountable)",
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],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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{
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"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1840, American Philosophical Society, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Vol. XVIII. July 1878 to March 1880:",
"text": "We find there quite seriously the monstrous hyperboles of swallowing a camel, of having a wooden beam in the eye, of a camel's going through the eye of a needle, of heaping coals of fire on the head; all well enough as jokes, like the description of the Green Mountain road so steep that \"greased lightning could not go down it without the breeching on\".",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "[1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Sentimental and Otherwise”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 104:",
"text": "He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the Garrison cup at Quebec races.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:",
"text": "And off he pops like greased lightning.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Mike Lloyd, Only the Gods Decide:",
"text": "You have to take your hat off to them. They've moved like greased lightning. I should have remembered about them. Slippery as a 'barrel load of eels' they are.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Kerri Pomarolli, If I'm Waiting on God, Then What Am I Doing in a Christian Chatroom?: Confessions of a Do-It-Yourself Single:",
"text": "I got on that computer faster than greased lightning and sent him an email.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something incredibly fast (now mainly used in comparison: like or faster than greased lightning)."
],
"id": "en-greased_lightning-en-noun-UXaJxGYP",
"links": [
[
"incredibly",
"incredibly"
],
[
"fast",
"fast#Adjective"
]
],
"tags": [
"uncountable"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"word": "jako namydlený blesk"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "smurt lyn"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"word": "rasvattu salama"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "geölter Blitz"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "wie der geölte Blitz"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "oljet lyn"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "olja lyn"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "olja lyn"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"word": "błyskawiczny"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "oljad blixt"
}
]
}
],
"word": "greased lightning"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Believed to come from the observation that greased machinery tends to run faster, and the notion that if a lightning strike (the fastest normally observed movement) could be greased, it might move even faster. Originally US usage, but soon well known in UK due to Thackeray's use in 1848 (see cite).",
"head_templates": [
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"expansion": "greased lightning (uncountable)",
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],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
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{
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"Terms with Danish translations",
"Terms with Finnish translations",
"Terms with German translations",
"Terms with Norwegian Bokmål translations",
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"Terms with Polish translations",
"Terms with Swedish translations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1840, American Philosophical Society, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Vol. XVIII. July 1878 to March 1880:",
"text": "We find there quite seriously the monstrous hyperboles of swallowing a camel, of having a wooden beam in the eye, of a camel's going through the eye of a needle, of heaping coals of fire on the head; all well enough as jokes, like the description of the Green Mountain road so steep that \"greased lightning could not go down it without the breeching on\".",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "[1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Sentimental and Otherwise”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 104:",
"text": "He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the Garrison cup at Quebec races.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:",
"text": "And off he pops like greased lightning.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Mike Lloyd, Only the Gods Decide:",
"text": "You have to take your hat off to them. They've moved like greased lightning. I should have remembered about them. Slippery as a 'barrel load of eels' they are.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Kerri Pomarolli, If I'm Waiting on God, Then What Am I Doing in a Christian Chatroom?: Confessions of a Do-It-Yourself Single:",
"text": "I got on that computer faster than greased lightning and sent him an email.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something incredibly fast (now mainly used in comparison: like or faster than greased lightning)."
],
"links": [
[
"incredibly",
"incredibly"
],
[
"fast",
"fast#Adjective"
]
],
"tags": [
"uncountable"
]
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"word": "jako namydlený blesk"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "smurt lyn"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"word": "rasvattu salama"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "geölter Blitz"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "wie der geölte Blitz"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "oljet lyn"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "olja lyn"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "olja lyn"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"word": "błyskawiczny"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "Something incredibly fast",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "oljad blixt"
}
],
"word": "greased lightning"
}
Download raw JSONL data for greased lightning meaning in All languages combined (3.9kB)
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.