"don't tread on me" meaning in English

See don't tread on me in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-don't tread on me.wav
Etymology: Calque of Late Latin nōlī mē tangere (literally “do not touch me”), from John 20:17 in the Bible. The phrase was initially rendered as dont tread on me, without apostrophe, as dont was then an accepted contraction of do not. In some later versions, due to standards for apostrophes becoming more strict since the 18th century, the first word was changed to don't. Etymology templates: {{clq|en|la-lat|nōlī mē tangere|lit=do not touch me}} Calque of Late Latin nōlī mē tangere (literally “do not touch me”) Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} don't tread on me
  1. A slogan, associated during the American Revolutionary War with freedom from British rule, and in more recent years with libertarianism and anti-government sentiments. Categories (topical): Libertarianism Synonyms: dont tread on me
    Sense id: en-don't_tread_on_me-en-phrase-pFwv4Q49 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English imperative sentences, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for don't tread on me meaning in English (1.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). 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.