"friends in high places" meaning in English

See friends in high places in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-friends in high places.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|p|head=friends in high places}} friends in high places pl (plural only)
  1. (idiomatic) Friends who have authority or influence and who can ensure that one's interests will be protected or furthered. Tags: idiomatic, plural, plural-only Related terms: it's not what you know but who you know, ride the coattails Translations (friends who have authority or influence): vaikutusvaltaiset ystävät [partitive, regional] (Finnish), befolyásos barátok (Hungarian), mocne plecy [masculine, plural] (Polish), tener buenas aldabas (Spanish), enchufismo [masculine] (Spanish)
    Sense id: en-friends_in_high_places-en-noun-muUh75xa Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Polish links with redundant wikilinks

Download JSON data for friends in high places meaning in English (3.3kB)

{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "friends in low places"
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p",
        "head": "friends in high places"
      },
      "expansion": "friends in high places pl (plural only)",
      "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"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English pluralia tantum",
          "parents": [
            "Pluralia tantum",
            "Nouns",
            "Lemmas"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Polish links with redundant wikilinks",
          "parents": [
            "Links with redundant wikilinks",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1913, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 10, in The Mischief Maker",
          "text": "Herr Freudenberg himself has great friends here, friends in high places. He will see that nothing happens.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987 November 30, “War Crimes: Long Road To Justice”, in Time, retrieved 2015-05-18",
          "text": "In recent years he was protected by friends in high places.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 April 1, Phillip Alder, “On a Day Made for Tricks, Lots of Ways to Get Them All”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-05-18",
          "text": "In Petrograd they were in great danger but had many friends in high places, and with money for bribes they avoided arrest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, “More News From Nowhere”, in Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds",
          "text": "I walk into the corner of my room / See my friends in high places / I don't know which is which or who is whom / They've stolen each other's faces",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Friends who have authority or influence and who can ensure that one's interests will be protected or furthered."
      ],
      "id": "en-friends_in_high_places-en-noun-muUh75xa",
      "links": [
        [
          "authority",
          "authority"
        ],
        [
          "influence",
          "influence"
        ],
        [
          "interest",
          "interest"
        ],
        [
          "protect",
          "protect"
        ],
        [
          "further",
          "further"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Friends who have authority or influence and who can ensure that one's interests will be protected or furthered."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "it's not what you know but who you know"
        },
        {
          "word": "ride the coattails"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
          "tags": [
            "partitive",
            "regional"
          ],
          "word": "vaikutusvaltaiset ystävät"
        },
        {
          "code": "hu",
          "lang": "Hungarian",
          "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
          "word": "befolyásos barátok"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
          "tags": [
            "masculine",
            "plural"
          ],
          "word": "mocne plecy"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
          "word": "tener buenas aldabas"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "enchufismo"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-friends in high places.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/0b/En-au-friends_in_high_places.ogg/En-au-friends_in_high_places.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/En-au-friends_in_high_places.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "friends in high places"
}
{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "word": "friends in low places"
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p",
        "head": "friends in high places"
      },
      "expansion": "friends in high places pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "it's not what you know but who you know"
    },
    {
      "word": "ride the coattails"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English pluralia tantum",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Polish links with redundant wikilinks",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1913, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 10, in The Mischief Maker",
          "text": "Herr Freudenberg himself has great friends here, friends in high places. He will see that nothing happens.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987 November 30, “War Crimes: Long Road To Justice”, in Time, retrieved 2015-05-18",
          "text": "In recent years he was protected by friends in high places.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 April 1, Phillip Alder, “On a Day Made for Tricks, Lots of Ways to Get Them All”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-05-18",
          "text": "In Petrograd they were in great danger but had many friends in high places, and with money for bribes they avoided arrest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, “More News From Nowhere”, in Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds",
          "text": "I walk into the corner of my room / See my friends in high places / I don't know which is which or who is whom / They've stolen each other's faces",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Friends who have authority or influence and who can ensure that one's interests will be protected or furthered."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "authority",
          "authority"
        ],
        [
          "influence",
          "influence"
        ],
        [
          "interest",
          "interest"
        ],
        [
          "protect",
          "protect"
        ],
        [
          "further",
          "further"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Friends who have authority or influence and who can ensure that one's interests will be protected or furthered."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-friends in high places.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/0b/En-au-friends_in_high_places.ogg/En-au-friends_in_high_places.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/En-au-friends_in_high_places.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
      "tags": [
        "partitive",
        "regional"
      ],
      "word": "vaikutusvaltaiset ystävät"
    },
    {
      "code": "hu",
      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
      "word": "befolyásos barátok"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
      "tags": [
        "masculine",
        "plural"
      ],
      "word": "mocne plecy"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
      "word": "tener buenas aldabas"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "friends who have authority or influence",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "enchufismo"
    }
  ],
  "word": "friends in high places"
}

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.