See death by a thousand cuts in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for death by a thousand cuts meaning in English (2.5kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "deaths by a thousand cuts",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "~",
"2": "deaths by a thousand cuts"
},
"expansion": "death by a thousand cuts (countable and uncountable, plural deaths by a thousand cuts)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "70 30",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "89 11",
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Capital punishment",
"orig": "en:Capital punishment",
"parents": [
"Criminal law",
"Death",
"Law",
"Body",
"Life",
"Justice",
"Human",
"Nature",
"Society",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "85 15",
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Torture",
"orig": "en:Torture",
"parents": [
"Violence",
"Human behaviour",
"Human",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"derived": [
{
"_dis1": "72 28",
"word": "death by a thousand paper cuts"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Lingchi, a form of execution."
],
"id": "en-death_by_a_thousand_cuts-en-noun-MBmUtD~n",
"links": [
[
"Lingchi",
"lingchi"
],
[
"execution",
"execution"
]
],
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "72 28",
"word": "Chinese water torture"
}
],
"tags": [
"countable",
"uncountable"
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2010 April 10, Tim Webb, “Heavy industry claims carbon emission targets are ‘death by a thousand cuts‘”, in The Guardian",
"text": "The steelmaker warned that moving production overseas would be an inevitable consequence. One executive said: “This is death by a thousand cuts.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2022 January 12, Sir Michael Holden, “Reform of the workforce or death by a thousand cuts?”, in RAIL, number 948, page 25",
"text": "There are only months left to save our railway from a vicious downward spiral. Do we choose reform of the workforce or death by a thousand cuts? Who will stand up and speak for the industry to avoid such a massive own goal?",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A gradual decline or failure as the result of many minor mishaps."
],
"id": "en-death_by_a_thousand_cuts-en-noun-zzdOzCxK",
"links": [
[
"gradual",
"gradual"
],
[
"decline",
"decline"
],
[
"failure",
"failure"
],
[
"minor",
"minor"
],
[
"mishap",
"mishap"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(figurative) A gradual decline or failure as the result of many minor mishaps."
],
"tags": [
"countable",
"figuratively",
"uncountable"
]
}
],
"word": "death by a thousand cuts"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English uncountable nouns",
"en:Capital punishment",
"en:Torture"
],
"derived": [
{
"word": "death by a thousand paper cuts"
}
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "deaths by a thousand cuts",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "~",
"2": "deaths by a thousand cuts"
},
"expansion": "death by a thousand cuts (countable and uncountable, plural deaths by a thousand cuts)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "Chinese water torture"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"glosses": [
"Lingchi, a form of execution."
],
"links": [
[
"Lingchi",
"lingchi"
],
[
"execution",
"execution"
]
],
"tags": [
"countable",
"uncountable"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2010 April 10, Tim Webb, “Heavy industry claims carbon emission targets are ‘death by a thousand cuts‘”, in The Guardian",
"text": "The steelmaker warned that moving production overseas would be an inevitable consequence. One executive said: “This is death by a thousand cuts.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2022 January 12, Sir Michael Holden, “Reform of the workforce or death by a thousand cuts?”, in RAIL, number 948, page 25",
"text": "There are only months left to save our railway from a vicious downward spiral. Do we choose reform of the workforce or death by a thousand cuts? Who will stand up and speak for the industry to avoid such a massive own goal?",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A gradual decline or failure as the result of many minor mishaps."
],
"links": [
[
"gradual",
"gradual"
],
[
"decline",
"decline"
],
[
"failure",
"failure"
],
[
"minor",
"minor"
],
[
"mishap",
"mishap"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(figurative) A gradual decline or failure as the result of many minor mishaps."
],
"tags": [
"countable",
"figuratively",
"uncountable"
]
}
],
"word": "death by a thousand cuts"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 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.