"at a loose end" meaning in English

See at a loose end in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} at a loose end, {{en-PP}} at a loose end
  1. (chiefly UK) Idle; bored Tags: UK Related terms: at loose ends
    Sense id: en-at_a_loose_end-en-prep_phrase-3bII7QXq Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for at a loose end meaning in English (1.1kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "at a loose end",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "at a loose end",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_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": "2021 August 25, Stefanie Foster, “Comment: A dumb way to die”, in RAIL, number 938, page 3",
          "text": "Once the schools break up for the holidays, children across the country are at a loose end and instances of kids doing stupid things on the railway become far too common.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Idle; bored"
      ],
      "id": "en-at_a_loose_end-en-prep_phrase-3bII7QXq",
      "links": [
        [
          "Idle",
          "idle"
        ],
        [
          "bored",
          "bored"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly UK) Idle; bored"
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "at loose ends"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "at a loose end"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "at a loose end",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "at a loose end",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "at loose ends"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2021 August 25, Stefanie Foster, “Comment: A dumb way to die”, in RAIL, number 938, page 3",
          "text": "Once the schools break up for the holidays, children across the country are at a loose end and instances of kids doing stupid things on the railway become far too common.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Idle; bored"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Idle",
          "idle"
        ],
        [
          "bored",
          "bored"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly UK) Idle; bored"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "at a loose end"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c 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.