"at the mercy of" meaning in English

See at the mercy of in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Audio: en-au-at the mercy of.ogg
Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} at the mercy of, {{en-PP}} at the mercy of
  1. (idiomatic) In the power of; defenceless/defenseless against. Tags: idiomatic Translations (defenseless against): تَحْتَ رَحْمَةِ (taḥta raḥmati) (Arabic), a la mercè de (Catalan), a mercè de (Catalan), armoilla (Finnish), à la merci de (French), den Launen ausgeliefert (German), alla mercé di (Italian), in balia di (Italian), na łasce (Polish), à mercê de (Portuguese), a merced de (Spanish), a la merced de (Spanish)
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          "text": "The ball game is scheduled for Saturday, but we're still at the mercy of the weather.",
          "type": "example"
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          "ref": "1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:",
          "text": "The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.",
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          "ref": "2024 March 20, Richard Foster, “Vital experience in an open-air classroom”, in RAIL, number 1005, page 60:",
          "text": "Most of Britain's railways were built in the Victorian era. Railway routes were not only at the mercy of geography, but also of local landowners who wanted to minimise the impact on their estates. Construction was carried out by navvies armed with picks and shovels, with very little understanding of the underlying geology.",
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        "In the power of; defenceless/defenseless against."
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        "(idiomatic) In the power of; defenceless/defenseless against."
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ar",
          "lang": "Arabic",
          "roman": "taḥta raḥmati",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "تَحْتَ رَحْمَةِ"
        },
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "a la mercè de"
        },
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "a mercè de"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "armoilla"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "à la merci de"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "note": "ausgeliefert (followed by a dative)",
          "sense": "defenseless against"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "den Launen ausgeliefert"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "alla mercé di"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "in balia di"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "na łasce"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "à mercê de"
        },
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          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "a merced de"
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          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "defenseless against",
          "word": "a la merced de"
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          "text": "The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.",
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        "(idiomatic) In the power of; defenceless/defenseless against."
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    {
      "code": "ar",
      "lang": "Arabic",
      "roman": "taḥta raḥmati",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "تَحْتَ رَحْمَةِ"
    },
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "a la mercè de"
    },
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "a mercè de"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "armoilla"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "à la merci de"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "note": "ausgeliefert (followed by a dative)",
      "sense": "defenseless against"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "den Launen ausgeliefert"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "alla mercé di"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "in balia di"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "na łasce"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "à mercê de"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "a merced de"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "defenseless against",
      "word": "a la merced de"
    }
  ],
  "word": "at the mercy of"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). 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.