"jaws of life" meaning in All languages combined

See jaws of life on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Etymology: By analogy with an actual jaw and the fact that this mechanical device allows the possibility of preserving the life of the victim being rescued. Head templates: {{en-noun|p}} jaws of life pl (plural only)
  1. (firefighting) Emergency rescue equipment used to open a severely damaged passenger vehicle with a strong mechanical jaw function that forcibly pushes or pulls metal components apart, to quickly and somewhat safely extricate the trapped occupants. Tags: plural, plural-only Translations (emergency rescue equipment): szczęki życia [feminine, plural] (Polish), desencarcerador (Portuguese), abre-latas [colloquial] (Portuguese), mandíbulas de la vida [feminine] (Spanish), quijadas de la vida [feminine, plural] (Spanish)
{
  "etymology_text": "By analogy with an actual jaw and the fact that this mechanical device allows the possibility of preserving the life of the victim being rescued.",
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "jaws of life pl (plural only)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
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          "parents": [],
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        {
          "kind": "other",
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        {
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        {
          "kind": "other",
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          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Firefighting",
          "orig": "en:Firefighting",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "2005, Mary Gordon, Pearl\nIsn't there some machine used in car wrecks to extricate people called the jaws of life?"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Chuck McCann, Short, Shorter and Shorter Stories, Volume 1, page 388",
          "text": "The power of the “jaws of life” were shown first and set aside."
        },
        {
          "text": "2009, Tony Evans, Tony Evan's Book of Illustrations\nEven when drivers have had wrecks through no one's fault but their own, rescue crews still employ the \"jaws of life\" to get them out of trouble."
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
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          "text": "For the most terrible of car accidents, jaws of life have to be used to extricate the injured.",
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      ],
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        "Emergency rescue equipment used to open a severely damaged passenger vehicle with a strong mechanical jaw function that forcibly pushes or pulls metal components apart, to quickly and somewhat safely extricate the trapped occupants."
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      "id": "en-jaws_of_life-en-noun-tSisjofa",
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        [
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        ],
        [
          "vehicle",
          "vehicle"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(firefighting) Emergency rescue equipment used to open a severely damaged passenger vehicle with a strong mechanical jaw function that forcibly pushes or pulls metal components apart, to quickly and somewhat safely extricate the trapped occupants."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "firefighting",
        "government"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "lang_code": "pl",
          "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
          "tags": [
            "feminine",
            "plural"
          ],
          "word": "szczęki życia"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "lang_code": "pt",
          "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
          "word": "desencarcerador"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "lang_code": "pt",
          "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
          "tags": [
            "colloquial"
          ],
          "word": "abre-latas"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "lang_code": "es",
          "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "mandíbulas de la vida"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "lang_code": "es",
          "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
          "tags": [
            "feminine",
            "plural"
          ],
          "word": "quijadas de la vida"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "jaws of life"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "By analogy with an actual jaw and the fact that this mechanical device allows the possibility of preserving the life of the victim being rescued.",
  "head_templates": [
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      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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        "English lemmas",
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        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Polish translations",
        "Terms with Portuguese translations",
        "Terms with Spanish translations",
        "en:Firefighting"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "2005, Mary Gordon, Pearl\nIsn't there some machine used in car wrecks to extricate people called the jaws of life?"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Chuck McCann, Short, Shorter and Shorter Stories, Volume 1, page 388",
          "text": "The power of the “jaws of life” were shown first and set aside."
        },
        {
          "text": "2009, Tony Evans, Tony Evan's Book of Illustrations\nEven when drivers have had wrecks through no one's fault but their own, rescue crews still employ the \"jaws of life\" to get them out of trouble."
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              40,
              52
            ]
          ],
          "text": "For the most terrible of car accidents, jaws of life have to be used to extricate the injured.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Emergency rescue equipment used to open a severely damaged passenger vehicle with a strong mechanical jaw function that forcibly pushes or pulls metal components apart, to quickly and somewhat safely extricate the trapped occupants."
      ],
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          "firefighting",
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        ],
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        ],
        [
          "vehicle",
          "vehicle"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(firefighting) Emergency rescue equipment used to open a severely damaged passenger vehicle with a strong mechanical jaw function that forcibly pushes or pulls metal components apart, to quickly and somewhat safely extricate the trapped occupants."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "firefighting",
        "government"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "lang_code": "pl",
      "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
      "tags": [
        "feminine",
        "plural"
      ],
      "word": "szczęki życia"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "lang_code": "pt",
      "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
      "word": "desencarcerador"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "lang_code": "pt",
      "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ],
      "word": "abre-latas"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "lang_code": "es",
      "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "mandíbulas de la vida"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "lang_code": "es",
      "sense": "emergency rescue equipment",
      "tags": [
        "feminine",
        "plural"
      ],
      "word": "quijadas de la vida"
    }
  ],
  "word": "jaws of life"
}

Download raw JSONL data for jaws of life meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)

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  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "noun",
  "title": "jaws of life",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-02 using wiktextract (6fdc867 and 9905b1f). 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.