"spike someone's guns" meaning in All languages combined

See spike someone's guns on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Forms: spikes someone's guns [present, singular, third-person], spiking someone's guns [participle, present], spiked someone's guns [participle, past], spiked someone's guns [past]
Etymology: From the wartime practice of welding a metal spike into the touch hole of a cannon (generally done to enemy guns by raiders, or to one's own guns if forced to abandon them in a retreat), making the cannon impossible to fire. Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=spike someone's guns}} spike someone's guns (third-person singular simple present spikes someone's guns, present participle spiking someone's guns, simple past and past participle spiked someone's guns)
  1. To frustrate a person's efforts or designs; to undercut, to render helpless.
    Sense id: en-spike_someone's_guns-en-verb-1pV5eK2G Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_text": "From the wartime practice of welding a metal spike into the touch hole of a cannon (generally done to enemy guns by raiders, or to one's own guns if forced to abandon them in a retreat), making the cannon impossible to fire.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "spikes someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiking someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiked someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiked someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "spike someone's guns"
      },
      "expansion": "spike someone's guns (third-person singular simple present spikes someone's guns, present participle spiking someone's guns, simple past and past participle spiked someone's guns)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society, published 2010, page 205:",
          "text": "But whatever the Russians may have felt (and, apparently, still do feel) about Shakespear, his superiors were delighted by the way he had so skilfully spiked the Tsar's guns by liberating his subjects.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 November 8, John Crace, The Guardian:",
          "text": "Labour is known to be worried about the Cameron effect and might attempt to spike his guns.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To frustrate a person's efforts or designs; to undercut, to render helpless."
      ],
      "id": "en-spike_someone's_guns-en-verb-1pV5eK2G",
      "links": [
        [
          "undercut",
          "undercut"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "spike someone's guns"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the wartime practice of welding a metal spike into the touch hole of a cannon (generally done to enemy guns by raiders, or to one's own guns if forced to abandon them in a retreat), making the cannon impossible to fire.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "spikes someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiking someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiked someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "spiked someone's guns",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "spike someone's guns"
      },
      "expansion": "spike someone's guns (third-person singular simple present spikes someone's guns, present participle spiking someone's guns, simple past and past participle spiked someone's guns)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society, published 2010, page 205:",
          "text": "But whatever the Russians may have felt (and, apparently, still do feel) about Shakespear, his superiors were delighted by the way he had so skilfully spiked the Tsar's guns by liberating his subjects.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 November 8, John Crace, The Guardian:",
          "text": "Labour is known to be worried about the Cameron effect and might attempt to spike his guns.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To frustrate a person's efforts or designs; to undercut, to render helpless."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "undercut",
          "undercut"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "spike someone's guns"
}

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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 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). 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.