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

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

Verb

Audio: EN-AU ck1 fall off the back of a truck.ogg [Australia], En-au-fall off the back of a truck.ogg [Australia] Forms: falls off the back of a truck [present, singular, third-person], falling off the back of a truck [participle, present], fell off the back of a truck [past], fallen off the back of a truck [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|fall<,,fell,fallen> off the back of a truck}} fall off the back of a truck (third-person singular simple present falls off the back of a truck, present participle falling off the back of a truck, simple past fell off the back of a truck, past participle fallen off the back of a truck)
  1. (idiomatic, Australia, US, euphemistic) Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession through illegal or otherwise dubious means. Tags: Australia, US, euphemistic, idiomatic Synonyms: fall off the back of a lorry (english: 'UK')
    Sense id: en-fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck-en-verb-xjBuPG7H Categories (other): American English, Australian English, English entries with incorrect language header, English euphemisms

Download JSON data for fall off the back of a truck meaning in English (2.6kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "falls off the back of a truck",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
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    },
    {
      "form": "falling off the back of a truck",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fell off the back of a truck",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fallen off the back of a truck",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fall<,,fell,fallen> off the back of a truck"
      },
      "expansion": "fall off the back of a truck (third-person singular simple present falls off the back of a truck, present participle falling off the back of a truck, simple past fell off the back of a truck, past participle fallen off the back of a truck)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
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          "name": "Australian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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          "kind": "other",
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The movie is still in theaters, but I got a copy that fell off the back of a truck.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession through illegal or otherwise dubious means."
      ],
      "id": "en-fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck-en-verb-xjBuPG7H",
      "links": [
        [
          "merchandise",
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        ],
        [
          "illegal",
          "illegal"
        ],
        [
          "dubious",
          "dubious"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, Australia, US, euphemistic) Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession through illegal or otherwise dubious means."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "english": "'UK'",
          "word": "fall off the back of a lorry"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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        "US",
        "euphemistic",
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      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a9/EN-AU_ck1_fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck.ogg/EN-AU_ck1_fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck.ogg.mp3",
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      "tags": [
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-fall off the back of a truck.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/41/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck.ogg/En-au-fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck.ogg.mp3",
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      "tags": [
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  "word": "fall off the back of a truck"
}

{
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      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "falling off the back of a truck",
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        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fell off the back of a truck",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fallen off the back of a truck",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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        "1": "fall<,,fell,fallen> off the back of a truck"
      },
      "expansion": "fall off the back of a truck (third-person singular simple present falls off the back of a truck, present participle falling off the back of a truck, simple past fell off the back of a truck, past participle fallen off the back of a truck)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "Australian English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English euphemisms",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The movie is still in theaters, but I got a copy that fell off the back of a truck.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
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        "Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession through illegal or otherwise dubious means."
      ],
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        [
          "illegal",
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        ]
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, Australia, US, euphemistic) Of an item of merchandise, to come into a person's possession through illegal or otherwise dubious means."
      ],
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        "Australia",
        "US",
        "euphemistic",
        "idiomatic"
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/EN-AU_ck1_fall_off_the_back_of_a_truck.ogg",
      "tags": [
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    {
      "audio": "En-au-fall off the back of a truck.ogg",
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      "tags": [
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    }
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "english": "'UK'",
      "word": "fall off the back of a lorry"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fall off the back of a truck"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.