See leave the ball in someone's court on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "leaves the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "leaving the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "left the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "left the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "leave<,,left> the ball in someone's court"
},
"expansion": "leave the ball in someone's court (third-person singular simple present leaves the ball in someone's court, present participle leaving the ball in someone's court, simple past and past participle left the ball in someone's court)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2016 June 22, Somini Sengupta, “Saudis Question U.N. Leader Over Report on Rights Violators”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "His statement also left the ball in the Security Council’s court, for it is scheduled to discuss the report in August. Saudi Arabia has powerful backers on the Council, including the United States.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022 June 21, Michael Hogan, “Sherwood recap: episode four – have we found our Keats?”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "The no-nonsense matriarch paid a visit to Cindy’s grandmother Julie (Lesley Manville), alluding to how they had once been friends and noting that both families were misfits – the shady crooks and “the angry strikers in a town full of scabs”. After giving her blessing to the young couple, she left the ball in a shellshocked Julie’s court.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2023 August 12, “Harry Kane joins Bayern Munich and leaves door open for Spurs return”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "Postecoglou had revealed on Friday that Kane’s move was “imminent” after a breakthrough in negotiations between the clubs was reached on Wednesday night. It left the ball in Kane’s court and he decided on Thursday to leave his boyhood club for Bayern, who will pay an initial £100m with add-ons potentially taking the deal up to an overall fee of £120m.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To hand over the responsibility or choice to someone to make a decision or take action about something."
],
"id": "en-leave_the_ball_in_someone's_court-en-verb-c74dQUbk",
"links": [
[
"hand over",
"hand over"
],
[
"responsibility",
"responsibility"
],
[
"choice",
"choice"
],
[
"make a decision",
"make a decision"
],
[
"take action",
"take action"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To hand over the responsibility or choice to someone to make a decision or take action about something."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"word": "leave the ball in someone's court"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "leaves the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "leaving the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "left the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "left the ball in someone's court",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "leave<,,left> the ball in someone's court"
},
"expansion": "leave the ball in someone's court (third-person singular simple present leaves the ball in someone's court, present participle leaving the ball in someone's court, simple past and past participle left the ball in someone's court)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2016 June 22, Somini Sengupta, “Saudis Question U.N. Leader Over Report on Rights Violators”, in The New York Times:",
"text": "His statement also left the ball in the Security Council’s court, for it is scheduled to discuss the report in August. Saudi Arabia has powerful backers on the Council, including the United States.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2022 June 21, Michael Hogan, “Sherwood recap: episode four – have we found our Keats?”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "The no-nonsense matriarch paid a visit to Cindy’s grandmother Julie (Lesley Manville), alluding to how they had once been friends and noting that both families were misfits – the shady crooks and “the angry strikers in a town full of scabs”. After giving her blessing to the young couple, she left the ball in a shellshocked Julie’s court.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2023 August 12, “Harry Kane joins Bayern Munich and leaves door open for Spurs return”, in The Guardian:",
"text": "Postecoglou had revealed on Friday that Kane’s move was “imminent” after a breakthrough in negotiations between the clubs was reached on Wednesday night. It left the ball in Kane’s court and he decided on Thursday to leave his boyhood club for Bayern, who will pay an initial £100m with add-ons potentially taking the deal up to an overall fee of £120m.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To hand over the responsibility or choice to someone to make a decision or take action about something."
],
"links": [
[
"hand over",
"hand over"
],
[
"responsibility",
"responsibility"
],
[
"choice",
"choice"
],
[
"make a decision",
"make a decision"
],
[
"take action",
"take action"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To hand over the responsibility or choice to someone to make a decision or take action about something."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"word": "leave the ball in someone's court"
}
Download raw JSONL data for leave the ball in someone's court meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)
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.