"do a never" meaning in English

See do a never in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: does a never [present, singular, third-person], doing a never [participle, present], did a never [past], done a never [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|do<does,,did,done> a never}} do a never (third-person singular simple present does a never, present participle doing a never, simple past did a never, past participle done a never)
  1. (UK, naval, slang, dated) To mess about; to idle instead of working. Tags: UK, dated, slang

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "does a never",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "doing a never",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "did a never",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "done a never",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "do<does,,did,done> a never"
      },
      "expansion": "do a never (third-person singular simple present does a never, present participle doing a never, simple past did a never, past participle done a never)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1943, Robert Burgess, Roland Blackburn, We Joined the Navy:",
          "text": "The Chief Buffer has got a howl on now because he got a blast from Torps, as so many of the part of ship hands were doing a never on the messdecks instead of working the main derrick.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To mess about; to idle instead of working."
      ],
      "id": "en-do_a_never-en-verb-o8TCdbR3",
      "links": [
        [
          "mess about",
          "mess about"
        ],
        [
          "idle",
          "idle"
        ],
        [
          "work",
          "work"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, naval, slang, dated) To mess about; to idle instead of working."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "dated",
        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "military",
        "naval",
        "navy",
        "politics",
        "war"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "do a never"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "does a never",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "doing a never",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "did a never",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "done a never",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "do<does,,did,done> a never"
      },
      "expansion": "do a never (third-person singular simple present does a never, present participle doing a never, simple past did a never, past participle done a never)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English dated terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1943, Robert Burgess, Roland Blackburn, We Joined the Navy:",
          "text": "The Chief Buffer has got a howl on now because he got a blast from Torps, as so many of the part of ship hands were doing a never on the messdecks instead of working the main derrick.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To mess about; to idle instead of working."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "mess about",
          "mess about"
        ],
        [
          "idle",
          "idle"
        ],
        [
          "work",
          "work"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, naval, slang, dated) To mess about; to idle instead of working."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "dated",
        "slang"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "government",
        "military",
        "naval",
        "navy",
        "politics",
        "war"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "do a never"
}

Download raw JSONL data for do a never meaning in English (1.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (ee63ee9 and 4230888). 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.