See rat's nest on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "rat's nests",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "rat's nest (plural rat's nests)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "50 50",
"word": "hornets' nest"
},
{
"_dis1": "50 50",
"word": "rat king"
},
{
"_dis1": "50 50",
"word": "spaghetti code"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with collocations",
"parents": [
"Terms with collocations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "rat's nest of a wiring harness",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1990 May 22, Bernard Holland, “Opera: A 17th-Century Rarity, Cesti's 'Dori'”, in New York Times, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "To make this mid-17th-century rat's nest of love affairs and sexual confusions intelligible for late-20th-century audiences is a job in itself.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003 November 1, Charles Arthur, “This is the sound of the future”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "That has been held up by the need to negotiate the distribution rights for each country with the labels and artists—a rat's nest of contracts.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015 August 26, “Editorial: Why can't college athletes unionize?”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "Faced with that rat's nest of legal and jurisdictional issues, the NLRB threw the Northwestern players' labor rights under the team bus.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically)."
],
"id": "en-rat's_nest-en-noun-en:complicated_mess",
"links": [
[
"complicated",
"complicated"
],
[
"entangled",
"entangled"
],
[
"disorderly",
"disorderly"
],
[
"physical",
"physical"
],
[
"metaphor",
"metaphor"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically)."
],
"senseid": [
"en:complicated mess"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "mare's nest"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with collocations",
"parents": [
"Terms with collocations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Computing",
"orig": "en:Computing",
"parents": [
"Technology",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "24 76",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "13 87",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "11 89",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2002 January 14, Jim Turley, “Embedded Processors, Part Two”, in PC Magazine, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "Many CPU silicon designers in the 1990s complained bitterly about the rat's nest in the center of SPARC chips.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 July 21, Larry Dignan, “Amazon's S3 outage: Is the cloud too complicated?”, in ZDNet, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "And cloud computing relies on millions of connections and services. In other words, it's a troubleshooting nightmare when the cloud goes bust. . . . In other words, the cloud will likely become more of a rat's nest.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"text": "2016 July 2, veryatlantic, \"Saturday, July 2, 2016: Addendum,\" Tales From The Trailer Court™ (retrieved 2 March 2017):"
},
{
"text": "Think of libraries as the way the sub-idiots who like C code hide all the rat's-nest programming they don't want you to see."
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically).",
"A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
],
"id": "en-rat's_nest-en-noun-en:complicated_mess1",
"links": [
[
"complicated",
"complicated"
],
[
"entangled",
"entangled"
],
[
"disorderly",
"disorderly"
],
[
"physical",
"physical"
],
[
"metaphor",
"metaphor"
],
[
"computing",
"computing#Noun"
],
[
"hyphenate",
"hyphenate"
],
[
"attributive",
"attributive"
],
[
"software",
"software"
],
[
"hardware",
"hardware"
],
[
"organize",
"organize"
],
[
"structure",
"structure"
]
],
"qualifier": "often hyphenated when used attributively",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically).",
"(idiomatic, computing, often hyphenated when used attributively) A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
],
"senseid": [
"en:complicated mess"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "mare's nest"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"topics": [
"computing",
"engineering",
"mathematics",
"natural-sciences",
"physical-sciences",
"sciences"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-rat's nest.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/17/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg"
}
],
"word": "rat's nest"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "rat's nests",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "rat's nest (plural rat's nests)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "hornets' nest"
},
{
"word": "rat king"
},
{
"word": "spaghetti code"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with collocations",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "rat's nest of a wiring harness",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1990 May 22, Bernard Holland, “Opera: A 17th-Century Rarity, Cesti's 'Dori'”, in New York Times, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "To make this mid-17th-century rat's nest of love affairs and sexual confusions intelligible for late-20th-century audiences is a job in itself.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2003 November 1, Charles Arthur, “This is the sound of the future”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "That has been held up by the need to negotiate the distribution rights for each country with the labels and artists—a rat's nest of contracts.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015 August 26, “Editorial: Why can't college athletes unionize?”, in Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "Faced with that rat's nest of legal and jurisdictional issues, the NLRB threw the Northwestern players' labor rights under the team bus.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically)."
],
"links": [
[
"complicated",
"complicated"
],
[
"entangled",
"entangled"
],
[
"disorderly",
"disorderly"
],
[
"physical",
"physical"
],
[
"metaphor",
"metaphor"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically)."
],
"senseid": [
"en:complicated mess"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "mare's nest"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with collocations",
"English terms with quotations",
"en:Computing"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2002 January 14, Jim Turley, “Embedded Processors, Part Two”, in PC Magazine, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "Many CPU silicon designers in the 1990s complained bitterly about the rat's nest in the center of SPARC chips.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2008 July 21, Larry Dignan, “Amazon's S3 outage: Is the cloud too complicated?”, in ZDNet, retrieved 2017-03-02:",
"text": "And cloud computing relies on millions of connections and services. In other words, it's a troubleshooting nightmare when the cloud goes bust. . . . In other words, the cloud will likely become more of a rat's nest.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"text": "2016 July 2, veryatlantic, \"Saturday, July 2, 2016: Addendum,\" Tales From The Trailer Court™ (retrieved 2 March 2017):"
},
{
"text": "Think of libraries as the way the sub-idiots who like C code hide all the rat's-nest programming they don't want you to see."
}
],
"glosses": [
"Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically).",
"A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
],
"links": [
[
"complicated",
"complicated"
],
[
"entangled",
"entangled"
],
[
"disorderly",
"disorderly"
],
[
"physical",
"physical"
],
[
"metaphor",
"metaphor"
],
[
"computing",
"computing#Noun"
],
[
"hyphenate",
"hyphenate"
],
[
"attributive",
"attributive"
],
[
"software",
"software"
],
[
"hardware",
"hardware"
],
[
"organize",
"organize"
],
[
"structure",
"structure"
]
],
"qualifier": "often hyphenated when used attributively",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) Something that is excessively complicated, entangled, or disorderly (either physically or metaphorically).",
"(idiomatic, computing, often hyphenated when used attributively) A software or hardware system whose design lacks organized structure, making it difficult to understand and maintain."
],
"senseid": [
"en:complicated mess"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "mare's nest"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"topics": [
"computing",
"engineering",
"mathematics",
"natural-sciences",
"physical-sciences",
"sciences"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-rat's nest.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/17/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/En-au-rat%27s_nest.ogg"
}
],
"word": "rat's nest"
}
Download raw JSONL data for rat's nest meaning in All languages combined (4.5kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.