See touch of the tar brush on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Believed to be of British origin.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "touches of the tar brush",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "touches of the tar brush"
},
"expansion": "touch of the tar brush (plural touches of the tar brush)",
"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"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Multiracial",
"orig": "en:Multiracial",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1936, Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia, page 30:",
"text": "She was quite young—not more than about twenty-five—and sort of dark and slinky-looking, if you know what I mean. Quite nice-looking in a kind of way, but rather as though she might have what my mother used to call \"a touch of the tar-brush.\"",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
],
"id": "en-touch_of_the_tar_brush-en-noun-AX-IF1rx",
"links": [
[
"African",
"African"
],
[
"Asian",
"Asian"
],
[
"ancestry",
"ancestry"
],
[
"Caucasian",
"Caucasian"
],
[
"mixed",
"mixed"
],
[
"racial",
"racial"
],
[
"heritage",
"heritage"
],
[
"Afro-Caribbean",
"Afro-Caribbean"
],
[
"South Asian",
"South Asian"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal) Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "lick of the tarbrush"
}
],
"tags": [
"informal"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-touch of the tar brush.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg"
}
],
"word": "touch of the tar brush"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Believed to be of British origin.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "touches of the tar brush",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "touches of the tar brush"
},
"expansion": "touch of the tar brush (plural touches of the tar brush)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English informal terms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:Multiracial"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1936, Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia, page 30:",
"text": "She was quite young—not more than about twenty-five—and sort of dark and slinky-looking, if you know what I mean. Quite nice-looking in a kind of way, but rather as though she might have what my mother used to call \"a touch of the tar-brush.\"",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
],
"links": [
[
"African",
"African"
],
[
"Asian",
"Asian"
],
[
"ancestry",
"ancestry"
],
[
"Caucasian",
"Caucasian"
],
[
"mixed",
"mixed"
],
[
"racial",
"racial"
],
[
"heritage",
"heritage"
],
[
"Afro-Caribbean",
"Afro-Caribbean"
],
[
"South Asian",
"South Asian"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(informal) Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "lick of the tarbrush"
}
],
"tags": [
"informal"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-touch of the tar brush.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg"
}
],
"word": "touch of the tar brush"
}
Download raw JSONL data for touch of the tar brush meaning in All languages combined (2.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (ee63ee9 and 4230888). 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.