See make bricks without straw on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From Exodus 5:18: \"Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.\" (NIV).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "makes bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "making bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "make<,,made> bricks without straw"
},
"expansion": "make bricks without straw (third-person singular simple present makes bricks without straw, present participle making bricks without straw, simple past and past participle made bricks without straw)",
"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"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Bricks",
"orig": "en:Bricks",
"parents": [
"Building materials",
"Construction",
"Materials",
"Architecture",
"Engineering",
"Manufacturing",
"Applied sciences",
"Art",
"Technology",
"Human activity",
"Sciences",
"Culture",
"All topics",
"Human behaviour",
"Society",
"Fundamental",
"Human"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1938, Jonas A. Jonasson, Bricks without straw: the story of Linfield College, page 168:",
"text": "The founders did more than \"make bricks without straw; they dreamed of a great cathedral and laid the foundations for it.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008, Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, →ISBN, page 30:",
"text": "To call on the owners of little farms, the tradesmen, labourers and sailors to pay their proportion of a [£20,000] tax, when perhaps there is not half that sum in circulation is something harder than being forced to make bricks without straw,” he wrote; \"it is to make them without clay.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Peter F. Serra, Snapshots of Inspiration, →ISBN, page 170:",
"text": "The problems that we may find ourselves confronted with may be similar to a make bricks without straw condition, imposed by not only others but in large measure ourselves.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"id": "en-make_bricks_without_straw-en-verb-Lxl1HgwM",
"links": [
[
"accomplish",
"accomplish"
],
[
"without",
"without"
],
[
"material",
"material"
],
[
"unreasonable",
"unreasonable"
],
[
"impossible",
"impossible"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "make bricks without straws"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-make bricks without straw.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg"
}
],
"word": "make bricks without straw"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From Exodus 5:18: \"Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.\" (NIV).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "makes bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "making bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "make<,,made> bricks without straw"
},
"expansion": "make bricks without straw (third-person singular simple present makes bricks without straw, present participle making bricks without straw, simple past and past participle made bricks without straw)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms derived from the Bible",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:Bricks"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1938, Jonas A. Jonasson, Bricks without straw: the story of Linfield College, page 168:",
"text": "The founders did more than \"make bricks without straw; they dreamed of a great cathedral and laid the foundations for it.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008, Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, →ISBN, page 30:",
"text": "To call on the owners of little farms, the tradesmen, labourers and sailors to pay their proportion of a [£20,000] tax, when perhaps there is not half that sum in circulation is something harder than being forced to make bricks without straw,” he wrote; \"it is to make them without clay.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Peter F. Serra, Snapshots of Inspiration, →ISBN, page 170:",
"text": "The problems that we may find ourselves confronted with may be similar to a make bricks without straw condition, imposed by not only others but in large measure ourselves.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"links": [
[
"accomplish",
"accomplish"
],
[
"without",
"without"
],
[
"material",
"material"
],
[
"unreasonable",
"unreasonable"
],
[
"impossible",
"impossible"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-make bricks without straw.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "make bricks without straws"
}
],
"word": "make bricks without straw"
}
Download raw JSONL data for make bricks without straw meaning in All languages combined (2.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (c15a5ce and 5c11237). 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.