drop a dime on someone in English

Forms: drops a dime on someone [present, singular, third-person], dropping a dime on someone [participle, present], dropped a dime on someone [participle, past], dropped a dime on someone [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: Referring to the cost of making a phone call, i.e. to the police. Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} drop a dime on someone (third-person singular simple present drops a dime on someone, present participle dropping a dime on someone, simple past and past participle dropped a dime on someone)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Referring to the cost of making a phone call, i.e. to the police.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "drops a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dropping a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dropped a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dropped a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "drop a dime on someone (third-person singular simple present drops a dime on someone, present participle dropping a dime on someone, simple past and past participle dropped a dime on someone)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To inform on (a person); to turn someone in."
      ],
      "id": "en-drop_a_dime_on_someone-en-verb-cx9AoXTs",
      "links": [
        [
          "inform",
          "inform"
        ],
        [
          "turn someone in",
          "turn in"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang) To inform on (a person); to turn someone in."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "inform"
        },
        {
          "word": "grass up"
        },
        {
          "word": "snitch"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "drop a dime on someone"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Referring to the cost of making a phone call, i.e. to the police.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "drops a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dropping a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dropped a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "dropped a dime on someone",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "drop a dime on someone (third-person singular simple present drops a dime on someone, present participle dropping a dime on someone, simple past and past participle dropped a dime on someone)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English slang",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To inform on (a person); to turn someone in."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "inform",
          "inform"
        ],
        [
          "turn someone in",
          "turn in"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang) To inform on (a person); to turn someone in."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "inform"
    },
    {
      "word": "grass up"
    },
    {
      "word": "snitch"
    }
  ],
  "word": "drop a dime on someone"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-05-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-05-01 using wiktextract (142890b and 1d3fdbf). 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.

"drop a dime on someone" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms