"business end" meaning in English

See business end in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-business end.ogg [Australia] Forms: business ends [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} business end (plural business ends)
  1. (idiomatic) The part of a tool or weapon that is physically used for its operation, rather than the part which is held. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-business_end-en-noun-z7GTnhhQ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 53 47
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) The part of anything that is most important and that produces the significant result. Tags: broadly, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-business_end-en-noun-k7mce5f- Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 53 47
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: pointy end

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for business end meaning in English (3.0kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "business ends",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "business end (plural business ends)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "pointy end"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "53 47",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The business end of a hammer is known as the \"head\".",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1962 April, R. K. Evans, “The Acceptance Testing of Diesel Locomotives”, in Modern Railways, page 268",
          "text": "Speed by now was now down to 25 m.p.h., but that universal tool, the insulated screwdriver, with its business end gingerly applied to the relay coil, enabled us to keep going as far as Grantham, where a more permanent remedy could be effected.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015, Clutch, A Quick Death in Texas",
          "text": "The preacher stood up from his table, in his right hand he held a bible (hey-hey) / And in his left, the business end of a Winchester rifle",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The part of a tool or weapon that is physically used for its operation, rather than the part which is held."
      ],
      "id": "en-business_end-en-noun-z7GTnhhQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "tool",
          "tool"
        ],
        [
          "weapon",
          "weapon"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) The part of a tool or weapon that is physically used for its operation, rather than the part which is held."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "53 47",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1973, Lyall Watson, Supernature, page iii. 102",
          "text": "There is even an example of convergent evolution at a molecular level in two enzymes, one from soil bacteria and the other from man, which have exactly the same patterns of amino acids at the \"business ends.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018 July 7, Phil McNulty, “Sweden 0-2 England”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "On this day, with expectation rising and the unmistakable feeling around this sweeping Samara Stadium that the World Cup is really reaching the business end, England delivered.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The part of anything that is most important and that produces the significant result."
      ],
      "id": "en-business_end-en-noun-k7mce5f-",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension) The part of anything that is most important and that produces the significant result."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-business end.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/86/En-au-business_end.ogg/En-au-business_end.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/En-au-business_end.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "business end"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "business ends",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "business end (plural business ends)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "pointy end"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The business end of a hammer is known as the \"head\".",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1962 April, R. K. Evans, “The Acceptance Testing of Diesel Locomotives”, in Modern Railways, page 268",
          "text": "Speed by now was now down to 25 m.p.h., but that universal tool, the insulated screwdriver, with its business end gingerly applied to the relay coil, enabled us to keep going as far as Grantham, where a more permanent remedy could be effected.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015, Clutch, A Quick Death in Texas",
          "text": "The preacher stood up from his table, in his right hand he held a bible (hey-hey) / And in his left, the business end of a Winchester rifle",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The part of a tool or weapon that is physically used for its operation, rather than the part which is held."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "tool",
          "tool"
        ],
        [
          "weapon",
          "weapon"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) The part of a tool or weapon that is physically used for its operation, rather than the part which is held."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1973, Lyall Watson, Supernature, page iii. 102",
          "text": "There is even an example of convergent evolution at a molecular level in two enzymes, one from soil bacteria and the other from man, which have exactly the same patterns of amino acids at the \"business ends.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018 July 7, Phil McNulty, “Sweden 0-2 England”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "On this day, with expectation rising and the unmistakable feeling around this sweeping Samara Stadium that the World Cup is really reaching the business end, England delivered.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The part of anything that is most important and that produces the significant result."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension) The part of anything that is most important and that produces the significant result."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-business end.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/86/En-au-business_end.ogg/En-au-business_end.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/En-au-business_end.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "business end"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c 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.