"wet work" meaning in All languages combined

See wet work on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-wet work.wav Forms: wetwork [alternative]
Etymology: Calque of Russian мо́крое де́ло (mókroje délo). Etymology templates: {{clq|en|ru|мо́крое де́ло}} Calque of Russian мо́крое де́ло (mókroje délo) Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} wet work (uncountable)
  1. (espionage, euphemistic) A covert assassination performed by government operatives. Tags: euphemistic, uncountable Translations (covert assassination): мо́крое де́ло (mókroje délo) [neuter] (Russian)
    Sense id: en-wet_work-en-noun-sUpEJs3H Categories (other): English euphemisms, Espionage, English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Russian translations, Murder Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 36 29 35 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 33 29 38 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 32 33 35 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 31 36 Disambiguation of Terms with Russian translations: 38 27 35 Disambiguation of Murder: 31 36 33 Topics: espionage, government, military, politics, war Disambiguation of 'covert assassination': 94 5 1
  2. (by extension) Work within a gang or organization that involves killing or attacking people, for assassination or intimidation. Tags: broadly, uncountable Related terms: terminate with extreme prejudice, wet job
    Sense id: en-wet_work-en-noun-VsV5rJPv Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Russian translations, Murder Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 36 29 35 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 33 29 38 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 32 33 35 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 31 36 Disambiguation of Terms with Russian translations: 38 27 35 Disambiguation of Murder: 31 36 33
  3. Cleaning tasks that involve scrubbing with cleansers. Tags: uncountable
    Sense id: en-wet_work-en-noun-Cvl-54S- Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Russian translations, Cleaning, Murder Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 36 29 35 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 33 29 38 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 32 33 35 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 31 36 Disambiguation of Terms with Russian translations: 38 27 35 Disambiguation of Cleaning: 7 6 87 Disambiguation of Murder: 31 36 33

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for wet work meaning in All languages combined (3.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-05-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-05-01 using wiktextract (85b9f46 and 1b6da77). 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.