See believe it or not in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for believe it or not meaning in English (5.2kB)
{
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "adverb"
},
"expansion": "believe it or not",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adv",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2001, Bryan A. Garner, Legal writing in plain English: a text with exercises, page 108",
"text": "That depends on how long the sentence is. Believe it or not, there’s a canon of construction about provisos, and the test is anything but clear: …",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Robert Bruce Thompson, Barbara Fritchman Thompson, PC hardware in a nutshell, page 230",
"text": "One common cause of “flipped bit” memory errors is, believe it or not, cosmic rays.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, David Brown, Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music, page 165",
"text": "The descending opening phrase of the aria is, believe it or not, Tatyana’s Fate theme from her Letter Scene, though now in a minor, not major key: …",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"This may be surprising, but it's true."
],
"id": "en-believe_it_or_not-en-adv-5tQDtZ28",
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) This may be surprising, but it's true."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "like it or not"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"tags": [
"uncommon"
],
"word": "believe or not"
},
{
"word": "surprisingly"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "ar",
"lang": "Arabic",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "صدق أو لا تصدق"
},
{
"code": "ceb",
"lang": "Cebuano",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "motuo ka o dili"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "信不信由你"
},
{
"code": "eo",
"lang": "Esperanto",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "kredu-ne-kredu"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"singular"
],
"word": "usko tai älä"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"plural",
"polite"
],
"word": "uskokaa tai älkää"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "croyez-le ou non"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "sage und schreibe"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "ha hiszed, ha nem"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "hiszed vagy sem"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "akár hiszed, akár nem"
},
{
"code": "id",
"lang": "Indonesian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "percaya atau tidak"
},
{
"code": "ga",
"lang": "Irish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "creid é nó ná creid"
},
{
"alt": "しんじようもしんじまいと",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "shinjiyō mo shinjimai to",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "信じようも信じまいと"
},
{
"alt": "しんじられないかもしれませんが",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "shinjirarenai ka mo shiremasen ga",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"formal"
],
"word": "信じられないかもしれませんが"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"note": "singular conversation partner",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "wierz lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"note": "singular conversation partner",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "uwierz lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"english": "multiple conversation partners",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "wierzcie lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"english": "multiple conversation partners",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "uwierzcie lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "acredite ou não"
},
{
"code": "gd",
"lang": "Scottish Gaelic",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"informal",
"singular"
],
"word": "creid sin no nach creid"
},
{
"code": "gd",
"lang": "Scottish Gaelic",
"note": "formal and/or plural",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "creidibh sin no nach creid"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "lo creas o no"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "tro det eller ej"
},
{
"code": "tl",
"lang": "Tagalog",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "sa maniwala ka o sa hindi"
},
{
"code": "tl",
"lang": "Tagalog",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "maniwala ka man o hindi"
},
{
"code": "te",
"lang": "Telugu",
"roman": "nammu nammaka pō",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "నమ్ము నమ్మక పో"
},
{
"code": "tr",
"lang": "Turkish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "ister inan, ister inanma"
}
]
}
],
"word": "believe it or not"
}
{
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "adverb"
},
"expansion": "believe it or not",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adv",
"related": [
{
"word": "like it or not"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English adverbs",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2001, Bryan A. Garner, Legal writing in plain English: a text with exercises, page 108",
"text": "That depends on how long the sentence is. Believe it or not, there’s a canon of construction about provisos, and the test is anything but clear: …",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003, Robert Bruce Thompson, Barbara Fritchman Thompson, PC hardware in a nutshell, page 230",
"text": "One common cause of “flipped bit” memory errors is, believe it or not, cosmic rays.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, David Brown, Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music, page 165",
"text": "The descending opening phrase of the aria is, believe it or not, Tatyana’s Fate theme from her Letter Scene, though now in a minor, not major key: …",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"This may be surprising, but it's true."
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) This may be surprising, but it's true."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"tags": [
"uncommon"
],
"word": "believe or not"
},
{
"word": "surprisingly"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "ar",
"lang": "Arabic",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "صدق أو لا تصدق"
},
{
"code": "ceb",
"lang": "Cebuano",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "motuo ka o dili"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "信不信由你"
},
{
"code": "eo",
"lang": "Esperanto",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "kredu-ne-kredu"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"singular"
],
"word": "usko tai älä"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"plural",
"polite"
],
"word": "uskokaa tai älkää"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "croyez-le ou non"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "sage und schreibe"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "ha hiszed, ha nem"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "hiszed vagy sem"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "akár hiszed, akár nem"
},
{
"code": "id",
"lang": "Indonesian",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "percaya atau tidak"
},
{
"code": "ga",
"lang": "Irish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "creid é nó ná creid"
},
{
"alt": "しんじようもしんじまいと",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "shinjiyō mo shinjimai to",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "信じようも信じまいと"
},
{
"alt": "しんじられないかもしれませんが",
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "shinjirarenai ka mo shiremasen ga",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"formal"
],
"word": "信じられないかもしれませんが"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"note": "singular conversation partner",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "wierz lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"note": "singular conversation partner",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "uwierz lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"english": "multiple conversation partners",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "wierzcie lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"english": "multiple conversation partners",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "uwierzcie lub nie"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "acredite ou não"
},
{
"code": "gd",
"lang": "Scottish Gaelic",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"tags": [
"informal",
"singular"
],
"word": "creid sin no nach creid"
},
{
"code": "gd",
"lang": "Scottish Gaelic",
"note": "formal and/or plural",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "creidibh sin no nach creid"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "lo creas o no"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "tro det eller ej"
},
{
"code": "tl",
"lang": "Tagalog",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "sa maniwala ka o sa hindi"
},
{
"code": "tl",
"lang": "Tagalog",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "maniwala ka man o hindi"
},
{
"code": "te",
"lang": "Telugu",
"roman": "nammu nammaka pō",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "నమ్ము నమ్మక పో"
},
{
"code": "tr",
"lang": "Turkish",
"sense": "This may be surprising, but it's true",
"word": "ister inan, ister inanma"
}
],
"word": "believe it or not"
}
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.