See keep the wolf from the door on Wiktionary
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"etymology_text": "The original saying may have been keep the wolf from the gate, which dates from at least 1470. By the 1500s the saying had become keep the wolf from the door, with the current meaning that it bears: see, for example, the 1645 quotation.\nThere is a suggestion that the phrase may have originated from French or German phrases. Compare the French manger comme un loup (“eat like a wolf”), and the German Wolfsmagen (literally “wolf’s stomach”) means “a keen appetite”.",
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"text": "Indeed 'tis very fitting that He or She ſhould have wherewith to ſupport both, according to their quality, at leaſt to keep the Wolf from the Door, otherwiſe 'twere a meer madneſs to Marry; […]",
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"text": "This pittance, with a rake-off on photographs and autographs, ought to enable the heroic Viking [Fridtjof Nansen] to meet his coal-bin unflinchingly and keep the wolf from his door next summer.",
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"type": "quote"
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"ref": "2003, “A Wolf at the Door”, in Hail to the Thief, performed by Radiohead:",
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"word": "rimanere a galla"
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"word": "tirare avanti"
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"word": "barcamenarsi"
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"word": "cavarsela"
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"word": "sbarcare il lunario"
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"sense": "to ward off hunger",
"word": "famem a foribus pellere"
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"text": "Do you mind if I talk? It helps me keep the wolf from the door, so to speak. Jill, what do you think of the pedestrianization of Norwich city centre?",
"type": "quote"
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"ref": "2002 July 30, “the mekon”, “Wanking”, in uk.media.dvd (Usenet), message-ID <ai45tt$110mqu$2@ID-115312.news.dfncis.de>:",
"text": "I find it useful to look at a picture of Mo Mowlam at the change hands point, it helps to ‘keep the wolf from the door’ so to speak.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2014 December 1, “Carnal Calendar”, in Men's Health, South Africa, archived from the original on 2017-03-08:",
"text": "If you haven't got the self-control to keep the wolf from the door yourself, ask your partner to help out. She'll enjoy being the one in the driving seat for a change.",
"type": "quote"
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],
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"To delay sexual ejaculation."
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{
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"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to ward off poverty",
"word": "être à l’abri du besoin"
},
{
"code": "it",
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"sense": "to ward off poverty",
"word": "rimanere a galla"
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{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "to ward off poverty",
"word": "tirare avanti"
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{
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"word": "barcamenarsi"
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"code": "it",
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{
"code": "it",
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"sense": "to ward off poverty",
"word": "scamparla"
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{
"code": "it",
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"sense": "to ward off poverty",
"word": "sbarcare il lunario"
},
{
"code": "la",
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"sense": "to ward off hunger",
"word": "famem a foribus pellere"
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],
"word": "keep the wolf from the door"
}
Download raw JSONL data for keep the wolf from the door meaning in All languages combined (7.7kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-28 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-11-21 using wiktextract (65a6e81 and 0dbea76). 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.