See like cheese at fourpence on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From the mill towns of Lancashire, where fourpence was considered expensive for cheese and hence cheese for sale at that price would not be bought.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "adjective"
},
"expansion": "like cheese at fourpence",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"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": "1989, Colin Dunne, Hooligan, page 38:",
"text": "Don't stand there like cheese at fourpence.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Rachel Wyatt, Time's Reach, page 75:",
"text": "\"Why are you standing there like cheese at fourpence?\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Ruth Hamilton, Mersey View, page 89:",
"text": "Then you can stay sat there like cheese at fourpence till Mrs Henshaw gets back with her lawyer.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Of a person: waiting idly or timewasting."
],
"id": "en-like_cheese_at_fourpence-en-adj-oKHWvVl2",
"links": [
[
"wait",
"wait"
],
[
"idly",
"idly"
],
[
"timewasting",
"timewasting"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Of a person: waiting idly or timewasting."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-like cheese at fourpence.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/70/En-au-like_cheese_at_fourpence.ogg/En-au-like_cheese_at_fourpence.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/En-au-like_cheese_at_fourpence.ogg"
}
],
"word": "like cheese at fourpence"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From the mill towns of Lancashire, where fourpence was considered expensive for cheese and hence cheese for sale at that price would not be bought.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "adjective"
},
"expansion": "like cheese at fourpence",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English adjectives",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1989, Colin Dunne, Hooligan, page 38:",
"text": "Don't stand there like cheese at fourpence.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Rachel Wyatt, Time's Reach, page 75:",
"text": "\"Why are you standing there like cheese at fourpence?\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Ruth Hamilton, Mersey View, page 89:",
"text": "Then you can stay sat there like cheese at fourpence till Mrs Henshaw gets back with her lawyer.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Of a person: waiting idly or timewasting."
],
"links": [
[
"wait",
"wait"
],
[
"idly",
"idly"
],
[
"timewasting",
"timewasting"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Of a person: waiting idly or timewasting."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-like cheese at fourpence.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/70/En-au-like_cheese_at_fourpence.ogg/En-au-like_cheese_at_fourpence.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/En-au-like_cheese_at_fourpence.ogg"
}
],
"word": "like cheese at fourpence"
}
Download raw JSONL data for like cheese at fourpence meaning in All languages combined (1.6kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (1c4b89b 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.