"on-again, off-again" meaning in All languages combined

See on-again, off-again on Wiktionary

Adjective [English]

Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} on-again, off-again (not comparable)
  1. (of a significant other such as a boyfriend or girlfriend) Intermittent; frequent but irregular. Tags: not-comparable Synonyms: on-off, on-again-off-again, on-again off-again, on again, off again, on again off again Related terms: love-hate
    Sense id: en-on-again,_off-again-en-adj-hH4Kiw9Y Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English reduplications, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
{
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      "expansion": "on-again, off-again (not comparable)",
      "name": "en-adj"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "parents": [],
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2018 September 19, Katie Rife, “Eli Roth, of all directors, brings Amblin magic to the kid-lit horror of The House With A Clock In Its Walls”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 2018-09-20:",
          "text": "But the screenplay, from Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, diverts too often to inert scenes of Lewis’ struggles at school, and a subplot about his on-again, off-again friendship with bully Tarby Corrigan (Sunny Suljic) feels like a distraction from the magical business at hand.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 January 2, Maureen O’Connor, “The Etiquette Guru Who Broke Up With a Boyfriend Over Text”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "On the ninth day of filming Netflix’s “Mind Your Manners,” the show’s host, the Shanghai etiquette teacher Sara Jane Ho, dumped her on-again-off-again boyfriend of four years in a text message.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Intermittent; frequent but irregular."
      ],
      "id": "en-on-again,_off-again-en-adj-hH4Kiw9Y",
      "links": [
        [
          "significant other",
          "significant other"
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        [
          "Intermittent",
          "intermittent"
        ],
        [
          "frequent",
          "frequent"
        ],
        [
          "irregular",
          "irregular"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(of a significant other such as a boyfriend or girlfriend) Intermittent; frequent but irregular."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "of a significant other such as a boyfriend or girlfriend"
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "love-hate"
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      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "on-off"
        },
        {
          "word": "on-again-off-again"
        },
        {
          "word": "on-again off-again"
        },
        {
          "word": "on again, off again"
        },
        {
          "word": "on again off again"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "on-again, off-again"
}
{
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      "expansion": "on-again, off-again (not comparable)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "related": [
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      "word": "love-hate"
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          "ref": "2018 September 19, Katie Rife, “Eli Roth, of all directors, brings Amblin magic to the kid-lit horror of The House With A Clock In Its Walls”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 2018-09-20:",
          "text": "But the screenplay, from Supernatural creator Eric Kripke, diverts too often to inert scenes of Lewis’ struggles at school, and a subplot about his on-again, off-again friendship with bully Tarby Corrigan (Sunny Suljic) feels like a distraction from the magical business at hand.",
          "type": "quote"
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        {
          "ref": "2023 January 2, Maureen O’Connor, “The Etiquette Guru Who Broke Up With a Boyfriend Over Text”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:",
          "text": "On the ninth day of filming Netflix’s “Mind Your Manners,” the show’s host, the Shanghai etiquette teacher Sara Jane Ho, dumped her on-again-off-again boyfriend of four years in a text message.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Intermittent; frequent but irregular."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "significant other",
          "significant other"
        ],
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          "Intermittent",
          "intermittent"
        ],
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          "frequent",
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        ],
        [
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          "irregular"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(of a significant other such as a boyfriend or girlfriend) Intermittent; frequent but irregular."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "of a significant other such as a boyfriend or girlfriend"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "on-off"
    },
    {
      "word": "on-again-off-again"
    },
    {
      "word": "on-again off-again"
    },
    {
      "word": "on again, off again"
    },
    {
      "word": "on again off again"
    }
  ],
  "word": "on-again, off-again"
}

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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 2025-01-25 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.