earn one's wings in English

Forms: earns one's wings [present, singular, third-person], earning one's wings [participle, present], earned one's wings [participle, past], earned one's wings [past], earnt one's wings [participle, past], earnt one's wings [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: From the film It's a Wonderful Life, in which Charlie has to prove himself to earn his wings as a full-fledged angel. Head templates: {{en-verb|earn<,,:earnt> one's wings}} earn one's wings (third-person singular simple present earns one's wings, present participle earning one's wings, simple past and past participle earned one's wings or earnt one's wings)

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": "From the film It's a Wonderful Life, in which Charlie has to prove himself to earn his wings as a full-fledged angel.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "earns one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earning one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earned one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earned one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earnt one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earnt one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "earn<,,:earnt> one's wings"
      },
      "expansion": "earn one's wings (third-person singular simple present earns one's wings, present participle earning one's wings, simple past and past participle earned one's wings or earnt one's wings)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "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"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To prove one's worth or merit."
      ],
      "id": "en-earn_one's_wings-en-verb-ibCqhYO1",
      "links": [
        [
          "prove",
          "prove"
        ],
        [
          "worth",
          "worth"
        ],
        [
          "merit",
          "merit"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "earn one's stripes"
        },
        {
          "word": "get one's wings"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "It's a Wonderful Life"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "earn one's wings"
}

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

{
  "etymology_text": "From the film It's a Wonderful Life, in which Charlie has to prove himself to earn his wings as a full-fledged angel.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "earns one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earning one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earned one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earned one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earnt one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "earnt one's wings",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "earn<,,:earnt> one's wings"
      },
      "expansion": "earn one's wings (third-person singular simple present earns one's wings, present participle earning one's wings, simple past and past participle earned one's wings or earnt one's wings)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To prove one's worth or merit."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "prove",
          "prove"
        ],
        [
          "worth",
          "worth"
        ],
        [
          "merit",
          "merit"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "It's a Wonderful Life"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "earn one's stripes"
    },
    {
      "word": "get one's wings"
    }
  ],
  "word": "earn one's wings"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-21 using wiktextract (7c21d10 and f2e72e5). 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.

"earn one's wings" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms