"fish or cut bait" meaning in English

See fish or cut bait in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-fish or cut bait.ogg [Australia] Forms: fishes or cuts bait [present, singular, third-person], fishing or cutting bait [participle, present], fished or cut bait [participle, past], fished or cut bait [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|fish<> or cut<,,cut> bait|head=fish or cut bait}} fish or cut bait (third-person singular simple present fishes or cuts bait, present participle fishing or cutting bait, simple past and past participle fished or cut bait)
  1. (idiomatic) To make a decision, especially after a period of delay; to either take action now or forgo the opportunity. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: shit or get off the pot Related terms: put up or shut up, take a stand

Download JSON data for fish or cut bait meaning in English (3.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fishes or cuts bait",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fishing or cutting bait",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fished or cut bait",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fished or cut bait",
      "tags": [
        "past"
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fish<> or cut<,,cut> bait",
        "head": "fish or cut bait"
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      "expansion": "fish or cut bait (third-person singular simple present fishes or cuts bait, present participle fishing or cutting bait, simple past and past participle fished or cut bait)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
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          "name": "English coordinated pairs",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "It's time to fish or cut bait: either we buy this house now, or we must start looking for another one."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1898 May 18, “Merritt's Request for More Men”, in The Day, USA, retrieved 2012-01-15, page 4",
          "text": "The admiral . . . may stay in the bay and keep approaches to the city of Manila tightly closed for a long time to come, until perhaps some demand from the governments of Europe that the United States fish or cut bait comes in such shape that it must be heeded.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1923 July 28, “Hylan Will Fight Subway Petition with one of his Own”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-01-15",
          "text": "The Mayor cannot straddle this question any longer—he must either fish or cut bait.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1966 March 25, “Colleges: New Name on Wellesley's Door”, in Time",
          "text": "\"One of the attributes of an administrator is his ability to stick his neck out, to open his mouth and say something, to decide what side of the fence he is on and to take a stand there, to fish or cut bait, to put up or shut up,\" she says.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, W. E. B. Griffin, Special Ops",
          "text": "She told him fish or cut bait. Her and the kid, or him and the Army. He chose the Army.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a decision, especially after a period of delay; to either take action now or forgo the opportunity."
      ],
      "id": "en-fish_or_cut_bait-en-verb-WIIu4xAZ",
      "links": [
        [
          "decision",
          "decision"
        ],
        [
          "delay",
          "delay"
        ],
        [
          "forgo",
          "forgo"
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To make a decision, especially after a period of delay; to either take action now or forgo the opportunity."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "put up or shut up"
        },
        {
          "word": "take a stand"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "shit or get off the pot"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
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      "audio": "en-au-fish or cut bait.ogg",
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/En-au-fish_or_cut_bait.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fish or cut bait"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "fishes or cuts bait",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
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    },
    {
      "form": "fishing or cutting bait",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
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    },
    {
      "form": "fished or cut bait",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
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    },
    {
      "form": "fished or cut bait",
      "tags": [
        "past"
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  ],
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        "1": "fish<> or cut<,,cut> bait",
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      "name": "en-verb"
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      "word": "put up or shut up"
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      "word": "take a stand"
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        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "It's time to fish or cut bait: either we buy this house now, or we must start looking for another one."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1898 May 18, “Merritt's Request for More Men”, in The Day, USA, retrieved 2012-01-15, page 4",
          "text": "The admiral . . . may stay in the bay and keep approaches to the city of Manila tightly closed for a long time to come, until perhaps some demand from the governments of Europe that the United States fish or cut bait comes in such shape that it must be heeded.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1923 July 28, “Hylan Will Fight Subway Petition with one of his Own”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-01-15",
          "text": "The Mayor cannot straddle this question any longer—he must either fish or cut bait.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1966 March 25, “Colleges: New Name on Wellesley's Door”, in Time",
          "text": "\"One of the attributes of an administrator is his ability to stick his neck out, to open his mouth and say something, to decide what side of the fence he is on and to take a stand there, to fish or cut bait, to put up or shut up,\" she says.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, W. E. B. Griffin, Special Ops",
          "text": "She told him fish or cut bait. Her and the kid, or him and the Army. He chose the Army.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a decision, especially after a period of delay; to either take action now or forgo the opportunity."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "decision",
          "decision"
        ],
        [
          "delay",
          "delay"
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        [
          "forgo",
          "forgo"
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To make a decision, especially after a period of delay; to either take action now or forgo the opportunity."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
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      "audio": "en-au-fish or cut bait.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b1/En-au-fish_or_cut_bait.ogg/En-au-fish_or_cut_bait.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/En-au-fish_or_cut_bait.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "shit or get off the pot"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fish or cut bait"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.