See fly on the wall in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for fly on the wall meaning in English (2.7kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "flies on the wall",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "flies on the wall"
},
"expansion": "fly on the wall (plural flies on the wall)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1918 August 9, “Clark Would Draft Even Men of 68”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-10-28, page 11",
"text": "James W. Gerard, ex-Ambassador to Germany, the first speaker of the evening, said that at that moment he would like to be a fly on the wall of the palace at Potsdam to hear what the Potsdam gang were saying about our soldiers.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"id": "en-fly_on_the_wall-en-noun-rWCVVNdf",
"links": [
[
"quiet",
"quiet"
],
[
"non-",
"non-"
],
[
"participating",
"participating"
],
[
"observer",
"observer"
],
[
"eavesdropper",
"eavesdropper"
],
[
"witness",
"witness"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på væggen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "kärpänen katossa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "petite souris"
},
{
"code": "de",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "Mäuschen"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på veggen"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "fluge på veggen"
},
{
"code": "es",
"english": "hole in the wall",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "agujero en la pared"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "fluga på väggen"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-fly on the wall.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/43/En-au-fly_on_the_wall.ogg/En-au-fly_on_the_wall.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/En-au-fly_on_the_wall.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "fly on the wall"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "flies on the wall",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "flies on the wall"
},
"expansion": "fly on the wall (plural flies on the wall)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1918 August 9, “Clark Would Draft Even Men of 68”, in New York Times, retrieved 2008-10-28, page 11",
"text": "James W. Gerard, ex-Ambassador to Germany, the first speaker of the evening, said that at that moment he would like to be a fly on the wall of the palace at Potsdam to hear what the Potsdam gang were saying about our soldiers.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"links": [
[
"quiet",
"quiet"
],
[
"non-",
"non-"
],
[
"participating",
"participating"
],
[
"observer",
"observer"
],
[
"eavesdropper",
"eavesdropper"
],
[
"witness",
"witness"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A quiet, non-participating, or unseen observer; an eavesdropper or witness."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-fly on the wall.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/43/En-au-fly_on_the_wall.ogg/En-au-fly_on_the_wall.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/En-au-fly_on_the_wall.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på væggen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "kärpänen katossa"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "petite souris"
},
{
"code": "de",
"english": "little mouse",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "Mäuschen"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "flue på veggen"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "fluge på veggen"
},
{
"code": "es",
"english": "hole in the wall",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"word": "agujero en la pared"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "quiet, non-participating or unseen observer",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "fluga på väggen"
}
],
"word": "fly on the wall"
}
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.