See pound of flesh on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "From Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which Antonio literally owes a pound of his flesh to the moneylender Shylock.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "pounds of flesh",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "pounds of flesh"
},
"expansion": "pound of flesh (plural pounds of flesh)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
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"parents": [],
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],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1918, Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, part 5, ch. 1:",
"text": "You must be under the impression that I'm one of these damned New England sharks that get their pound of flesh off the widow and orphan. If you're a little short, sign a note.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1998, “Celebrity Skin”, performed by Hole:",
"text": "When I wake up in my makeup / It's too early for that dress / Wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood / I'm glad I came here with your pound of flesh",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2012 September 22, “Indian Reform: At Last”, in The Economist:",
"text": "[…] [Trinamool] Congress [Party] will need to strike deals with other regional allies, such as Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh. Their pound of flesh will be anti-reform, too.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding."
],
"id": "en-pound_of_flesh-en-noun-f~B36jfM",
"links": [
[
"owe",
"owe"
],
[
"hurtful",
"hurtful"
],
[
"difficult",
"difficult"
],
[
"provide",
"provide"
],
[
"debt",
"debt"
],
[
"merciless",
"merciless"
],
[
"demanding",
"demanding"
]
],
"qualifier": "sensitive",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, sensitive) Something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Merchant of Venice"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-pound of flesh.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/06/En-au-pound_of_flesh.ogg/En-au-pound_of_flesh.ogg.mp3",
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],
"word": "pound of flesh"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which Antonio literally owes a pound of his flesh to the moneylender Shylock.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "pounds of flesh",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "pounds of flesh"
},
"expansion": "pound of flesh (plural pounds of flesh)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms first attested in Shakespeare",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1918, Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, part 5, ch. 1:",
"text": "You must be under the impression that I'm one of these damned New England sharks that get their pound of flesh off the widow and orphan. If you're a little short, sign a note.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1998, “Celebrity Skin”, performed by Hole:",
"text": "When I wake up in my makeup / It's too early for that dress / Wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood / I'm glad I came here with your pound of flesh",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2012 September 22, “Indian Reform: At Last”, in The Economist:",
"text": "[…] [Trinamool] Congress [Party] will need to strike deals with other regional allies, such as Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh. Their pound of flesh will be anti-reform, too.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding."
],
"links": [
[
"owe",
"owe"
],
[
"hurtful",
"hurtful"
],
[
"difficult",
"difficult"
],
[
"provide",
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],
[
"debt",
"debt"
],
[
"merciless",
"merciless"
],
[
"demanding",
"demanding"
]
],
"qualifier": "sensitive",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, sensitive) Something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"wikipedia": [
"The Merchant of Venice"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-pound of flesh.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/06/En-au-pound_of_flesh.ogg/En-au-pound_of_flesh.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/En-au-pound_of_flesh.ogg"
}
],
"word": "pound of flesh"
}
Download raw JSONL data for pound of flesh meaning in All languages combined (2.4kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (05fdf6b 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.