"brass ceiling" meaning in English

See brass ceiling in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-brass ceiling.ogg [Australia] Forms: brass ceilings [plural]
Etymology: brass (“indicating high-ranking officers”) + ceiling (“suggesting a barrier to upward advancement”) Etymology templates: {{m|en|brass||indicating high-ranking officers}} brass (“indicating high-ranking officers”), {{m|en|ceiling||suggesting a barrier to upward advancement}} ceiling (“suggesting a barrier to upward advancement”) Head templates: {{en-noun}} brass ceiling (plural brass ceilings)
  1. (idiomatic) An unwritten, uncodified barrier to promotion or progression for women in law enforcement or the military. Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): Feminism, Forms of discrimination, Law enforcement, Military Related terms: glass ceiling, bamboo ceiling, cotton ceiling
    Sense id: en-brass_ceiling-en-noun-yjhRPmUj Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for brass ceiling meaning in English (3.0kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "brass",
        "3": "",
        "4": "indicating high-ranking officers"
      },
      "expansion": "brass (“indicating high-ranking officers”)",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "ceiling",
        "3": "",
        "4": "suggesting a barrier to upward advancement"
      },
      "expansion": "ceiling (“suggesting a barrier to upward advancement”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "brass (“indicating high-ranking officers”) + ceiling (“suggesting a barrier to upward advancement”)",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "brass ceilings",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "brass ceiling (plural brass ceilings)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Feminism",
          "orig": "en:Feminism",
          "parents": [
            "Female",
            "Gender",
            "Ideologies",
            "Society",
            "Sociology",
            "Biology",
            "Psychology",
            "Politics",
            "All topics",
            "Social sciences",
            "Sciences",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Forms of discrimination",
          "orig": "en:Forms of discrimination",
          "parents": [
            "Discrimination",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Law enforcement",
          "orig": "en:Law enforcement",
          "parents": [
            "Crime prevention",
            "Emergency services",
            "Law",
            "Crime",
            "Public safety",
            "Justice",
            "Criminal law",
            "Society",
            "Public administration",
            "Security",
            "All topics",
            "Government",
            "Fundamental",
            "Politics"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Military",
          "orig": "en:Military",
          "parents": [
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "2004, Dorothy Moses Schulz, Breaking the Brass Ceiling: Women Police Chiefs and Their Paths to the Top, Greenwood Publishing, →ISBN:",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "text": "2007, Breaking Through the Brass Ceiling: Elite Military Women's Strategies for Success, ProQuest., →ISBN:",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An unwritten, uncodified barrier to promotion or progression for women in law enforcement or the military."
      ],
      "id": "en-brass_ceiling-en-noun-yjhRPmUj",
      "links": [
        [
          "unwritten",
          "unwritten"
        ],
        [
          "uncodified",
          "uncodified"
        ],
        [
          "barrier",
          "barrier"
        ],
        [
          "promotion",
          "promotion"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) An unwritten, uncodified barrier to promotion or progression for women in law enforcement or the military."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "glass ceiling"
        },
        {
          "word": "bamboo ceiling"
        },
        {
          "word": "cotton ceiling"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-brass ceiling.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c5/En-au-brass_ceiling.ogg/En-au-brass_ceiling.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/En-au-brass_ceiling.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "brass ceiling"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "brass",
        "3": "",
        "4": "indicating high-ranking officers"
      },
      "expansion": "brass (“indicating high-ranking officers”)",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "ceiling",
        "3": "",
        "4": "suggesting a barrier to upward advancement"
      },
      "expansion": "ceiling (“suggesting a barrier to upward advancement”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "brass (“indicating high-ranking officers”) + ceiling (“suggesting a barrier to upward advancement”)",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "brass ceilings",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "brass ceiling (plural brass ceilings)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "glass ceiling"
    },
    {
      "word": "bamboo ceiling"
    },
    {
      "word": "cotton ceiling"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "en:Feminism",
        "en:Forms of discrimination",
        "en:Law enforcement",
        "en:Military"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "2004, Dorothy Moses Schulz, Breaking the Brass Ceiling: Women Police Chiefs and Their Paths to the Top, Greenwood Publishing, →ISBN:",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "text": "2007, Breaking Through the Brass Ceiling: Elite Military Women's Strategies for Success, ProQuest., →ISBN:",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An unwritten, uncodified barrier to promotion or progression for women in law enforcement or the military."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "unwritten",
          "unwritten"
        ],
        [
          "uncodified",
          "uncodified"
        ],
        [
          "barrier",
          "barrier"
        ],
        [
          "promotion",
          "promotion"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) An unwritten, uncodified barrier to promotion or progression for women in law enforcement or the military."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-brass ceiling.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c5/En-au-brass_ceiling.ogg/En-au-brass_ceiling.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/En-au-brass_ceiling.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "brass ceiling"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 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.