"I'm not being funny" meaning in English

See I'm not being funny in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Audio: en-au-I'm not being funny.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} I'm not being funny
  1. (UK, idiomatic) Used as a softening preface to a statement that might be taken as offensive or malicious. Tags: UK, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-I'm_not_being_funny-en-phrase-zAYDqHCw Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for I'm not being funny meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "I'm not being funny",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2009, Gavin Dudeney, Nicky Hockly, Learning English as a Foreign Language For Dummies, page 296",
          "text": "Clara: Well, I'm not being funny, but those clothes aren't really suitable for having meetings with clients.\nJohn: Really?\nClara: I think so – a shirt and tie, or suit and shirt would be better.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Martin Stanley, The Gamblers, page 280",
          "text": "I'm not being funny, but you make me nervous.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Kate Tempest, Wasted, page 13",
          "text": "You know, I'm not being funny, but, you know, when he's with all his cool new 'creative' mates. They ain't real, Tony. They ain't like us. They sit around, with ironic trousers on and three haircuts each, waiting to be discovered.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used as a softening preface to a statement that might be taken as offensive or malicious."
      ],
      "id": "en-I'm_not_being_funny-en-phrase-zAYDqHCw",
      "links": [
        [
          "offensive",
          "offensive#English"
        ],
        [
          "malicious",
          "malicious#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, idiomatic) Used as a softening preface to a statement that might be taken as offensive or malicious."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-I'm not being funny.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e9/En-au-I%27m_not_being_funny.ogg/En-au-I%27m_not_being_funny.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/En-au-I%27m_not_being_funny.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "I'm not being funny"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "I'm not being funny",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2009, Gavin Dudeney, Nicky Hockly, Learning English as a Foreign Language For Dummies, page 296",
          "text": "Clara: Well, I'm not being funny, but those clothes aren't really suitable for having meetings with clients.\nJohn: Really?\nClara: I think so – a shirt and tie, or suit and shirt would be better.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Martin Stanley, The Gamblers, page 280",
          "text": "I'm not being funny, but you make me nervous.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Kate Tempest, Wasted, page 13",
          "text": "You know, I'm not being funny, but, you know, when he's with all his cool new 'creative' mates. They ain't real, Tony. They ain't like us. They sit around, with ironic trousers on and three haircuts each, waiting to be discovered.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used as a softening preface to a statement that might be taken as offensive or malicious."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "offensive",
          "offensive#English"
        ],
        [
          "malicious",
          "malicious#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, idiomatic) Used as a softening preface to a statement that might be taken as offensive or malicious."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-I'm not being funny.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e9/En-au-I%27m_not_being_funny.ogg/En-au-I%27m_not_being_funny.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/En-au-I%27m_not_being_funny.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "I'm not being funny"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (e268c0e and 304864d). 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.