"friend of Bill W." meaning in English

See friend of Bill W. in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-friend of Bill W..ogg [Australia] Forms: friends of Bill W. [plural]
Etymology: An allusion to William Griffith Wilson (1895–1971), known as “Bill W.”, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Head templates: {{en-noun|friends of Bill W.}} friend of Bill W. (plural friends of Bill W.)
  1. (idiomatic, euphemistic) A recovering alcoholic, especially one who is a member of the organization Alcoholics Anonymous. Wikipedia link: Bill W. Tags: euphemistic, idiomatic Categories (topical): People Synonyms: friend of Bill, friend of Bill's Related terms: friend of Dorothy

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for friend of Bill W. meaning in English (3.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to William Griffith Wilson (1895–1971), known as “Bill W.”, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "friends of Bill W.",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "friends of Bill W."
      },
      "expansion": "friend of Bill W. (plural friends of Bill W.)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English euphemisms",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1994 May 31, “Obituary: Middletown BRIAN EDWARD CRAWFORD”, in Providence Journal, USA, page D10",
          "text": "He was a friend of Bill W. and had just celebrated Ten Years of Sobriety.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 February 23, Lynne Margolis, “Delbert McClinton rocks the boat for music lovers”, in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, retrieved 2011-07-08",
          "text": "The Sandy Beaches cruise offers Alcoholics Anonymous meetings billed simply as Friends of Bill W.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Jack Canfield et al., Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul,, page 49",
          "text": "Most people in recovery know that asking if you are a friend of Bill W. is an anonymous way to identify yourself as a member of AA.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A recovering alcoholic, especially one who is a member of the organization Alcoholics Anonymous."
      ],
      "id": "en-friend_of_Bill_W.-en-noun-mwmf2jht",
      "links": [
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          "recovering",
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        ],
        [
          "alcoholic",
          "alcoholic"
        ],
        [
          "Alcoholics Anonymous",
          "Alcoholics Anonymous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, euphemistic) A recovering alcoholic, especially one who is a member of the organization Alcoholics Anonymous."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "friend of Dorothy"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "friend of Bill"
        },
        {
          "word": "friend of Bill's"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "euphemistic",
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Bill W."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-friend of Bill W..ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/03/En-au-friend_of_Bill_W..ogg/En-au-friend_of_Bill_W..ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/En-au-friend_of_Bill_W..ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "friend of Bill W."
}
{
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to William Griffith Wilson (1895–1971), known as “Bill W.”, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "friends of Bill W.",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "friends of Bill W."
      },
      "expansion": "friend of Bill W. (plural friends of Bill W.)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "friend of Dorothy"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English eponyms",
        "English euphemisms",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms spelled with .",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:People"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1994 May 31, “Obituary: Middletown BRIAN EDWARD CRAWFORD”, in Providence Journal, USA, page D10",
          "text": "He was a friend of Bill W. and had just celebrated Ten Years of Sobriety.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 February 23, Lynne Margolis, “Delbert McClinton rocks the boat for music lovers”, in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, retrieved 2011-07-08",
          "text": "The Sandy Beaches cruise offers Alcoholics Anonymous meetings billed simply as Friends of Bill W.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Jack Canfield et al., Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul,, page 49",
          "text": "Most people in recovery know that asking if you are a friend of Bill W. is an anonymous way to identify yourself as a member of AA.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A recovering alcoholic, especially one who is a member of the organization Alcoholics Anonymous."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "recovering",
          "recovering"
        ],
        [
          "alcoholic",
          "alcoholic"
        ],
        [
          "Alcoholics Anonymous",
          "Alcoholics Anonymous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, euphemistic) A recovering alcoholic, especially one who is a member of the organization Alcoholics Anonymous."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "euphemistic",
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Bill W."
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "en-au-friend of Bill W..ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/03/En-au-friend_of_Bill_W..ogg/En-au-friend_of_Bill_W..ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/En-au-friend_of_Bill_W..ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "friend of Bill"
    },
    {
      "word": "friend of Bill's"
    }
  ],
  "word": "friend of Bill W."
}

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