"Jellyby" meaning in English

See Jellyby in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: Jellybys [plural], Jellybies [plural]
Etymology: After the character of Mrs Jellyby in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House (1852), who busies herself with charity work for Africa while her own household goes to ruin. Head templates: {{en-noun|s|+}} Jellyby (plural Jellybys or Jellybies)
  1. A philanthropist who cares only for people in distant regions, or people away from their own household. Wikipedia link: Bleak House Categories (topical): Fictional characters, Human behaviour, People, Personality

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for Jellyby meaning in English (2.6kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "After the character of Mrs Jellyby in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House (1852), who busies herself with charity work for Africa while her own household goes to ruin.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Jellybys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "Jellybies",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s",
        "2": "+"
      },
      "expansion": "Jellyby (plural Jellybys or Jellybies)",
      "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": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Fictional characters",
          "orig": "en:Fictional characters",
          "parents": [
            "Fiction",
            "Artistic works",
            "Art",
            "Culture",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Human behaviour",
          "orig": "en:Human behaviour",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Personality",
          "orig": "en:Personality",
          "parents": [
            "Mind",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1992, Bernard Shaw, Rebecca Swift, Letters from Margaret: correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler 1944-1950",
          "text": "My mother, devoted to music, was a Jellyby. Strictly brought up, straight backed, never careless of her person, but still as to her children, a Jellyby.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, American Society of Magazine Editors, The Best American Magazine Writing 2005, page 360",
          "text": "Chuck Collins, a great-grandson of Oscar Mayer, is a rare non-fictional example of someone who gave away all his assets during his lifetime—a half-million-dollar inheritance, which he donated to charity nearly twenty years ago. […] He now has a daughter, who does not live like a Jellyby.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A philanthropist who cares only for people in distant regions, or people away from their own household."
      ],
      "id": "en-Jellyby-en-noun-1eAM-DmW",
      "links": [
        [
          "philanthropist",
          "philanthropist"
        ],
        [
          "distant",
          "distant"
        ],
        [
          "household",
          "household"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Bleak House"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Jellyby"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "After the character of Mrs Jellyby in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House (1852), who busies herself with charity work for Africa while her own household goes to ruin.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Jellybys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "Jellybies",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s",
        "2": "+"
      },
      "expansion": "Jellyby (plural Jellybys or Jellybies)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English eponyms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms derived from Dickensian works",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:Fictional characters",
        "en:Human behaviour",
        "en:People",
        "en:Personality"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1992, Bernard Shaw, Rebecca Swift, Letters from Margaret: correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler 1944-1950",
          "text": "My mother, devoted to music, was a Jellyby. Strictly brought up, straight backed, never careless of her person, but still as to her children, a Jellyby.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, American Society of Magazine Editors, The Best American Magazine Writing 2005, page 360",
          "text": "Chuck Collins, a great-grandson of Oscar Mayer, is a rare non-fictional example of someone who gave away all his assets during his lifetime—a half-million-dollar inheritance, which he donated to charity nearly twenty years ago. […] He now has a daughter, who does not live like a Jellyby.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A philanthropist who cares only for people in distant regions, or people away from their own household."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "philanthropist",
          "philanthropist"
        ],
        [
          "distant",
          "distant"
        ],
        [
          "household",
          "household"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Bleak House"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Jellyby"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-18 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 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.