See give the devil his due in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for give the devil his due meaning in English (2.3kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "gives the devil his due",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "giving the devil his due",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "gave the devil his due",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "given the devil his due",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "give<,,gave,given> the devil his due"
},
"expansion": "give the devil his due (third-person singular simple present gives the devil his due, present participle giving the devil his due, simple past gave the devil his due, past participle given the devil his due)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1821, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 4, in Kenilworth",
"text": "Yet give the devil his due; Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1922, Zane Grey, chapter 5, in The Day of the Beast",
"text": "And to give the devil his due he's finer than ever. Too damn fine for this crowd!",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007 April 5, Richard Schickel, \"The Fog of War Resistance\" (film review), Time",
"text": "We are obliged, at least this once, to give the devil his due — and to consider the possibility that he may even be, in this instance, the angel of bleak truthfulness."
}
],
"glosses": [
"To acknowledge the positive qualities of an individual who is unpleasant or disliked."
],
"id": "en-give_the_devil_his_due-en-verb-U5006H0Y",
"links": [
[
"acknowledge",
"acknowledge"
],
[
"positive",
"positive"
],
[
"qualities",
"quality"
],
[
"individual",
"individual"
],
[
"unpleasant",
"unpleasant"
],
[
"dislike",
"dislike"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, informal) To acknowledge the positive qualities of an individual who is unpleasant or disliked."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"informal"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-give the devil his due.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/ec/En-au-give_the_devil_his_due.ogg/En-au-give_the_devil_his_due.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/En-au-give_the_devil_his_due.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "give the devil his due"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "gives the devil his due",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "giving the devil his due",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "gave the devil his due",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "given the devil his due",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "give<,,gave,given> the devil his due"
},
"expansion": "give the devil his due (third-person singular simple present gives the devil his due, present participle giving the devil his due, simple past gave the devil his due, past participle given the devil his due)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English informal terms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1821, Sir Walter Scott, chapter 4, in Kenilworth",
"text": "Yet give the devil his due; Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1922, Zane Grey, chapter 5, in The Day of the Beast",
"text": "And to give the devil his due he's finer than ever. Too damn fine for this crowd!",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007 April 5, Richard Schickel, \"The Fog of War Resistance\" (film review), Time",
"text": "We are obliged, at least this once, to give the devil his due — and to consider the possibility that he may even be, in this instance, the angel of bleak truthfulness."
}
],
"glosses": [
"To acknowledge the positive qualities of an individual who is unpleasant or disliked."
],
"links": [
[
"acknowledge",
"acknowledge"
],
[
"positive",
"positive"
],
[
"qualities",
"quality"
],
[
"individual",
"individual"
],
[
"unpleasant",
"unpleasant"
],
[
"dislike",
"dislike"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, informal) To acknowledge the positive qualities of an individual who is unpleasant or disliked."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"informal"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-give the devil his due.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/ec/En-au-give_the_devil_his_due.ogg/En-au-give_the_devil_his_due.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/En-au-give_the_devil_his_due.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "give the devil his due"
}
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.