"Winter of Discontent" meaning in English

See Winter of Discontent in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Etymology: An allusion to the opening line of William Shakespeare's play Richard III ("Now is the winter of our discontent"). Head templates: {{en-prop|head=Winter of Discontent}} Winter of Discontent
  1. (UK politics, historical) A period during 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, when the Labour Party's efforts to control inflation led to widespread strikes by public-sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises. Wikipedia link: Winter of Discontent Tags: UK, historical Categories (topical): UK politics, William Shakespeare Synonyms: winter of discontent Related terms: Arab Winter

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for Winter of Discontent meaning in English (2.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to the opening line of William Shakespeare's play Richard III (\"Now is the winter of our discontent\").",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "Winter of Discontent"
      },
      "expansion": "Winter of Discontent",
      "name": "en-prop"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "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 topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "UK politics",
          "orig": "en:UK politics",
          "parents": [
            "Politics",
            "United Kingdom",
            "Society",
            "British Isles",
            "Europe",
            "All topics",
            "Islands",
            "Earth",
            "Eurasia",
            "Fundamental",
            "Places",
            "Nature",
            "Names",
            "Proper nouns",
            "Terms by semantic function",
            "Nouns",
            "Lemmas"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "William Shakespeare",
          "orig": "en:William Shakespeare",
          "parents": [
            "Authors",
            "Individuals",
            "Literature",
            "People",
            "Culture",
            "Entertainment",
            "Writing",
            "Human",
            "Society",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Language",
            "All topics",
            "Communication",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2021 September 23, Larry Elliott, “Petrol disruption will fuel fears of new winter of discontent”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Nor is the government facing a strike by tanker drivers, as was the case in early 1979 during the winter of discontent.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A period during 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, when the Labour Party's efforts to control inflation led to widespread strikes by public-sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises."
      ],
      "id": "en-Winter_of_Discontent-en-name-2TVBWyU9",
      "links": [
        [
          "United Kingdom",
          "United Kingdom"
        ],
        [
          "Labour Party",
          "Labour Party"
        ],
        [
          "inflation",
          "inflation"
        ],
        [
          "widespread",
          "widespread"
        ],
        [
          "strike",
          "strike"
        ],
        [
          "public-sector",
          "public sector"
        ],
        [
          "trade union",
          "trade union"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK politics, historical) A period during 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, when the Labour Party's efforts to control inflation led to widespread strikes by public-sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Arab Winter"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "winter of discontent"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "historical"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "politics"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Winter of Discontent"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Winter of Discontent"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to the opening line of William Shakespeare's play Richard III (\"Now is the winter of our discontent\").",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "head": "Winter of Discontent"
      },
      "expansion": "Winter of Discontent",
      "name": "en-prop"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Arab Winter"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English proper nouns",
        "English terms with historical senses",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "en:UK politics",
        "en:William Shakespeare"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2021 September 23, Larry Elliott, “Petrol disruption will fuel fears of new winter of discontent”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Nor is the government facing a strike by tanker drivers, as was the case in early 1979 during the winter of discontent.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A period during 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, when the Labour Party's efforts to control inflation led to widespread strikes by public-sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "United Kingdom",
          "United Kingdom"
        ],
        [
          "Labour Party",
          "Labour Party"
        ],
        [
          "inflation",
          "inflation"
        ],
        [
          "widespread",
          "widespread"
        ],
        [
          "strike",
          "strike"
        ],
        [
          "public-sector",
          "public sector"
        ],
        [
          "trade union",
          "trade union"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK politics, historical) A period during 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, when the Labour Party's efforts to control inflation led to widespread strikes by public-sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "historical"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "politics"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Winter of Discontent"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "winter of discontent"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Winter of Discontent"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.