"gateway drug" meaning in English

See gateway drug in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: gateway drugs [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} gateway drug (plural gateway drugs)
  1. An addictive substance that is seen as relatively harmless by itself, but is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances. Categories (topical): Drugs Translations (substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances): porttihuume (Finnish), Einstiegsdroge [feminine] (German), kapudrog (Hungarian), droga de entrada [feminine] (Portuguese), шлюз (šljuz) [masculine] (Russian), ста́ртовый нарко́тик (stártovyj narkótik) [masculine] (Russian), перехо́дный нарко́тик (perexódnyj narkótik) [masculine] (Russian)
    Sense id: en-gateway_drug-en-noun-GDIac59l Disambiguation of Drugs: 67 33 Disambiguation of 'substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances': 94 6
  2. (by extension, figurative) Any thing or area of interest that tends to lead to deeper involvement. Tags: broadly, figuratively
    Sense id: en-gateway_drug-en-noun-eY3tFXdu Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 22 78 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 29 71 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 24 76

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for gateway drug meaning in English (3.9kB)

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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "gateway drugs",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "gateway drug (plural gateway drugs)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "67 33",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Drugs",
          "orig": "en:Drugs",
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            "Nature",
            "Biochemistry",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An addictive substance that is seen as relatively harmless by itself, but is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances."
      ],
      "id": "en-gateway_drug-en-noun-GDIac59l",
      "links": [
        [
          "addictive",
          "addictive"
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        [
          "harmless",
          "harmless"
        ],
        [
          "encourage",
          "encourage"
        ],
        [
          "experiment",
          "experiment"
        ],
        [
          "harmful",
          "harmful"
        ]
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "word": "porttihuume"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "Einstiegsdroge"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "hu",
          "lang": "Hungarian",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "word": "kapudrog"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "droga de entrada"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "šljuz",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "шлюз"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "stártovyj narkótik",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "ста́ртовый нарко́тик"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "perexódnyj narkótik",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "перехо́дный нарко́тик"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "94 6",
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "note": "ключево́й нарко́тик m (ključevój narkótik) (no idiomatic translation exists)",
          "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances"
        }
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          "_dis": "29 71",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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          "_dis": "24 76",
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2014, Dave Fancher, Book of F#: Breaking Free with Managed Functional Programming, page XX",
          "text": "It has been said that LINQ is a gateway drug for functional programming",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2019, Emily Padraic, Under My Skin, page 3",
          "text": "Darn you, Downton Abbey, for being the gateway drug for all things BBC.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Any thing or area of interest that tends to lead to deeper involvement."
      ],
      "id": "en-gateway_drug-en-noun-eY3tFXdu",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension, figurative) Any thing or area of interest that tends to lead to deeper involvement."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "gateway drug"
}
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
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    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
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    "en:Drugs"
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  "forms": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "An addictive substance that is seen as relatively harmless by itself, but is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "addictive",
          "addictive"
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          "ref": "2014, Dave Fancher, Book of F#: Breaking Free with Managed Functional Programming, page XX",
          "text": "It has been said that LINQ is a gateway drug for functional programming",
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        },
        {
          "ref": "2019, Emily Padraic, Under My Skin, page 3",
          "text": "Darn you, Downton Abbey, for being the gateway drug for all things BBC.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Any thing or area of interest that tends to lead to deeper involvement."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension, figurative) Any thing or area of interest that tends to lead to deeper involvement."
      ],
      "tags": [
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "word": "porttihuume"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "Einstiegsdroge"
    },
    {
      "code": "hu",
      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "word": "kapudrog"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "droga de entrada"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "šljuz",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "шлюз"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "stártovyj narkótik",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "ста́ртовый нарко́тик"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "perexódnyj narkótik",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "перехо́дный нарко́тик"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "note": "ключево́й нарко́тик m (ključevój narkótik) (no idiomatic translation exists)",
      "sense": "substance that is believed to encourage the user to experiment with more harmful substances"
    }
  ],
  "word": "gateway drug"
}

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.