"five-by-five" meaning in English

See five-by-five in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-five-by-five.wav Forms: five by five [alternative]
Etymology: From radio communications phrase dating from the 1950s. The first five referred to a rating of signal clarity, the other to reception strength. See Signal strength and readability report on Wikipedia.Wikipedia Etymology templates: {{pedia|Signal strength and readability report}} Signal strength and readability report on Wikipedia.Wikipedia Head templates: {{en-adj|-}} five-by-five (not comparable)
  1. Loud and clear. Tags: not-comparable Categories (topical): Five Translations (loud and clear): cinq sur cinq (French)
    Sense id: en-five-by-five-en-adj-kne~ti4Y Disambiguation of Five: 37 20 25 18 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English reduplicated coordinated pairs, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with French translations, Terms with Norwegian Bokmål translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 48 20 13 18 Disambiguation of English reduplicated coordinated pairs: 61 14 9 15 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 69 11 7 13 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 48 22 12 18 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 49 22 10 19 Disambiguation of Terms with French translations: 82 18 Disambiguation of Terms with Norwegian Bokmål translations: 53 17 12 18 Disambiguation of 'loud and clear': 94 6
  2. Fine; OK. Tags: not-comparable
    Sense id: en-five-by-five-en-adj-CEzAcbYI
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Etymology number: 1

Noun

Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-five-by-five.wav Forms: five-by-fives [plural], five by five [alternative]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} five-by-five (plural five-by-fives)
  1. (basketball) A performance in which a player accumulates five points in each of five statistical categories (points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks) in a single game. Categories (topical): Basketball Translations (basketball term): fem-av-fem [masculine] (Norwegian Bokmål)
    Sense id: en-five-by-five-en-noun-W6IV70tV Topics: ball-games, basketball, games, hobbies, lifestyle, sports Disambiguation of 'basketball term': 79 21
  2. (slang) Someone whose body is roughly shaped like a square; a short and fat person. Tags: slang Synonyms: fat person
    Sense id: en-five-by-five-en-noun-PDcLRxdP
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Etymology number: 2

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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          "ref": "2024 September 28, Harry Blank, “Not Ready for Prime Time”, in Deadlined, →ISBN, page 602:",
          "text": "McInnis nodded, and Carter keyed the mic. \"CAONCI-Site-43 calling Overwatch Command,\" he intoned in his best radio voice. Veiksaar smirked. \"CAONCI-Site-43, Overwatch Command. Do you read?\"\nThe response came immediately, to the visible relief of all nine of them. Even Wettle. \"Five by five, CAONCI-Site-43. Five by five.\"",
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        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "fr",
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          "sense": "loud and clear",
          "word": "cinq sur cinq"
        }
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      "form": "five-by-fives",
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          "_dis1": "79 21",
          "code": "nb",
          "lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
          "sense": "basketball term",
          "tags": [
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          "ref": "1953, Warren Eyster, Ear From the Customary Skies, New York, N.Y.: Random House, page 335:",
          "text": "\"Yeah? No stuff? You, a date? Wad yuh know. What is she, a five-by-five?\"",
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        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Jeremiah Healy, The Only Good Lawyer: A John Francis Cuddy Mystery, New York, N.Y. […]: Pocket Books, →ISBN, page 71:",
          "text": "\"The muscle was Oscar Huong, a real Mr. five-by-five. Father supposedly a black Marine boxing champion. The brains was Nguyen Trinh—or 'Nugey,' for short. He had no idea who his daddy was.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
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      ],
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        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 September 28, Harry Blank, “Not Ready for Prime Time”, in Deadlined, →ISBN, page 602:",
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      "code": "fr",
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      "sense": "loud and clear",
      "word": "cinq sur cinq"
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  ],
  "word": "five-by-five"
}

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      "word": "fem-av-fem"
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  ],
  "word": "five-by-five"
}

Download raw JSONL data for five-by-five meaning in English (5.7kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-21 using wiktextract (fef8596 and 633533e). 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.