"fall off the back of a lorry" meaning in English

See fall off the back of a lorry in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-fall off the back of a lorry.ogg [Australia] Forms: falls off the back of a lorry [present, singular, third-person], falling off the back of a lorry [participle, present], fell off the back of a lorry [past], fallen off the back of a lorry [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|fall<,,fell,fallen> off the back of a lorry}} fall off the back of a lorry (third-person singular simple present falls off the back of a lorry, present participle falling off the back of a lorry, simple past fell off the back of a lorry, past participle fallen off the back of a lorry)
  1. (idiomatic, British, euphemistic) Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession without having been paid for; to have been acquired illegally. Tags: British, euphemistic, idiomatic Synonyms: fall off a truck (english: US / Australia)
    Sense id: en-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry-en-verb-lR-ueref Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header, English euphemisms

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for fall off the back of a lorry meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "falls off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "falling off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fell off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fallen off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fall<,,fell,fallen> off the back of a lorry"
      },
      "expansion": "fall off the back of a lorry (third-person singular simple present falls off the back of a lorry, present participle falling off the back of a lorry, simple past fell off the back of a lorry, past participle fallen off the back of a lorry)",
      "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": "English euphemisms",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession without having been paid for; to have been acquired illegally."
      ],
      "id": "en-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry-en-verb-lR-ueref",
      "links": [
        [
          "merchandise",
          "merchandise"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, British, euphemistic) Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession without having been paid for; to have been acquired illegally."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "english": "US / Australia",
          "word": "fall off a truck"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "British",
        "euphemistic",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fall off the back of a lorry.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e1/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry.ogg/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fall off the back of a lorry"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "falls off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "falling off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fell off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fallen off the back of a lorry",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fall<,,fell,fallen> off the back of a lorry"
      },
      "expansion": "fall off the back of a lorry (third-person singular simple present falls off the back of a lorry, present participle falling off the back of a lorry, simple past fell off the back of a lorry, past participle fallen off the back of a lorry)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English euphemisms",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession without having been paid for; to have been acquired illegally."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "merchandise",
          "merchandise"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, British, euphemistic) Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession without having been paid for; to have been acquired illegally."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "British",
        "euphemistic",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fall off the back of a lorry.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e1/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry.ogg/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_lorry.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "english": "US / Australia",
      "word": "fall off a truck"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fall off the back of a lorry"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 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.