"water off a duck's back" meaning in All languages combined

See water off a duck's back on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Etymology: From the idea that water rolls easily off a duck's back and does not penetrate the duck's feathers. Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} water off a duck's back (uncountable)
  1. Something potentially harmful or hurtful, such as criticism or insult, that nevertheless has no effect or impact on the target. Tags: uncountable
    Sense id: en-water_off_a_duck's_back-en-noun-SLbw3MCR Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Alternative forms

{
  "etymology_text": "From the idea that water rolls easily off a duck's back and does not penetrate the duck's feathers.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "water off a duck's back (uncountable)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "She's always going on at him about something, but to him it's all water off a duck's back.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something potentially harmful or hurtful, such as criticism or insult, that nevertheless has no effect or impact on the target."
      ],
      "id": "en-water_off_a_duck's_back-en-noun-SLbw3MCR",
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "water off a duck's back"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the idea that water rolls easily off a duck's back and does not penetrate the duck's feathers.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "water off a duck's back (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "She's always going on at him about something, but to him it's all water off a duck's back.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something potentially harmful or hurtful, such as criticism or insult, that nevertheless has no effect or impact on the target."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "water off a duck's back"
}

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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 2024-12-21 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.