"be the bigger man" meaning in English

See be the bigger man in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Head templates: {{head|en|verb|irregular; see conjugation of "be"}} be the bigger man (irregular; see conjugation of "be")
  1. to walk away from a conflict to stop it from escalating Synonyms: to be above
    Sense id: en-be_the_bigger_man-en-verb-uivooLUH Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for be the bigger man meaning in English (1.6kB)

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  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "verb",
        "3": "irregular; see conjugation of \"be\""
      },
      "expansion": "be the bigger man (irregular; see conjugation of \"be\")",
      "name": "head"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2012, Joseph Greene, The ComMANdments; The Official Guide Book to Man Rules, King-Size Edition, Lulu.com, page 84",
          "text": "Even if it's in retaliation for a roommate disrespecting your room, be the bigger Man and leave his room alone.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Barry Lyga, Lucky Day: An I Hunt Killers Novella, Hachette UK, page 39",
          "text": "I left 'em in the evidence locker. Someday, he's gonna come apologizing to me and I'll be the bigger man and let him have 'em.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Chris Hemmings, Be a Man, Biteback Publishing, page 62",
          "text": "I remember at a very early age being taught that, when faced with the prospect of fighting, I should always be the bigger man and walk away from it. It's something young boys hear over and over again in their early life. The idea of being the 'bigger man' evokes the belief that those who don't fight are, in fact, superior in their masculinity as they don't have to prove their dominance physically.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "to walk away from a conflict to stop it from escalating"
      ],
      "id": "en-be_the_bigger_man-en-verb-uivooLUH",
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "to be above"
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  "word": "be the bigger man"
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{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
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          "ref": "2012, Joseph Greene, The ComMANdments; The Official Guide Book to Man Rules, King-Size Edition, Lulu.com, page 84",
          "text": "Even if it's in retaliation for a roommate disrespecting your room, be the bigger Man and leave his room alone.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2014, Barry Lyga, Lucky Day: An I Hunt Killers Novella, Hachette UK, page 39",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "2017, Chris Hemmings, Be a Man, Biteback Publishing, page 62",
          "text": "I remember at a very early age being taught that, when faced with the prospect of fighting, I should always be the bigger man and walk away from it. It's something young boys hear over and over again in their early life. The idea of being the 'bigger man' evokes the belief that those who don't fight are, in fact, superior in their masculinity as they don't have to prove their dominance physically.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "to walk away from a conflict to stop it from escalating"
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  "synonyms": [
    {
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  ],
  "word": "be the bigger man"
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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 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.