"borrowed time" meaning in English

See borrowed time in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-borrowed time.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-|head=borrowed time}} borrowed time (uncountable)
  1. (idiomatic) A period of time whose precise duration is not known but which can be expected to be quite limited, and at the end of which one's situation, benefits, or opportunities will be entirely terminated. Tags: idiomatic, uncountable
    Sense id: en-borrowed_time-en-noun-ItplvYZf Categories (other): English terms with collocations, English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 88 12
  2. A length of time whose duration has traditionally expired, but which continues nonetheless. Tags: uncountable
    Sense id: en-borrowed_time-en-noun-2bSWe-w8

Download JSON data for borrowed time meaning in English (3.3kB)

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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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          "name": "English terms with collocations",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "to live on borrowed time",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1957 August 12, Herman N. Bundesen MD, “Diet and Health”, in Lewiston Daily Sun, retrieved 2011-06-28, page 3",
          "text": "A century ago you could expect to live 40 years. […] Anything beyond that was borrowed time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997 August 25, Christopher Clarey, “Ho Returns In Time To Say Farewell”, in New York Times, retrieved 2011-06-28",
          "text": "\"Basically, my back is a career-ending injury.\" […] It might seem like a Faustian bargain, but Ho is making the best of his borrowed time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Lisa Wingate, Larkspur Cove, page 193",
          "text": "The thing about borrowed time is that it always runs out quicker than you want it to.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 April 8, Howard Johnston, “East-ended? When the ECML was at risk”, in Rail, page 69",
          "text": "Several duplicate routes were on borrowed time, having escaped the Beeching cuts of half a decade earlier, but were nevertheless on the hit list for closure because they fell outside the recently devised social grants system.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 August 23, Pjotr Sauer, “Prigozhin’s death would leave lasting mark on Russian army and elite”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Ever since the abortive coup, speculation had been that Yevgeny Prigozhin could be living on borrowed time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A period of time whose precise duration is not known but which can be expected to be quite limited, and at the end of which one's situation, benefits, or opportunities will be entirely terminated."
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A period of time whose precise duration is not known but which can be expected to be quite limited, and at the end of which one's situation, benefits, or opportunities will be entirely terminated."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "uncountable"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Having survived when many others died, she decided to make good use of her borrowed time.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A length of time whose duration has traditionally expired, but which continues nonetheless."
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      "id": "en-borrowed_time-en-noun-2bSWe-w8",
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          "type": "example"
        },
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          "ref": "1957 August 12, Herman N. Bundesen MD, “Diet and Health”, in Lewiston Daily Sun, retrieved 2011-06-28, page 3",
          "text": "A century ago you could expect to live 40 years. […] Anything beyond that was borrowed time.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1997 August 25, Christopher Clarey, “Ho Returns In Time To Say Farewell”, in New York Times, retrieved 2011-06-28",
          "text": "\"Basically, my back is a career-ending injury.\" […] It might seem like a Faustian bargain, but Ho is making the best of his borrowed time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Lisa Wingate, Larkspur Cove, page 193",
          "text": "The thing about borrowed time is that it always runs out quicker than you want it to.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 April 8, Howard Johnston, “East-ended? When the ECML was at risk”, in Rail, page 69",
          "text": "Several duplicate routes were on borrowed time, having escaped the Beeching cuts of half a decade earlier, but were nevertheless on the hit list for closure because they fell outside the recently devised social grants system.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 August 23, Pjotr Sauer, “Prigozhin’s death would leave lasting mark on Russian army and elite”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Ever since the abortive coup, speculation had been that Yevgeny Prigozhin could be living on borrowed time.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "A period of time whose precise duration is not known but which can be expected to be quite limited, and at the end of which one's situation, benefits, or opportunities will be entirely terminated."
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        "(idiomatic) A period of time whose precise duration is not known but which can be expected to be quite limited, and at the end of which one's situation, benefits, or opportunities will be entirely terminated."
      ],
      "tags": [
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          "text": "Having survived when many others died, she decided to make good use of her borrowed time.",
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        "A length of time whose duration has traditionally expired, but which continues nonetheless."
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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.