See go through the motions in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for go through the motions meaning in English (3.6kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "goes through the motions",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "going through the motions",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "went through the motions",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "gone through the motions",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "go<goes,,went,gone> through the motions"
},
"expansion": "go through the motions (third-person singular simple present goes through the motions, present participle going through the motions, simple past went through the motions, past participle gone through the motions)",
"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"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Mandarin terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with redundant transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1905, Mark Twain, chapter 3, in The $30,000 Bequest",
"text": "Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the motions.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003 July 8, Jason Zweig, Benjamin Graham, “Get Rich Slowly: How to Pick a Financial Adviser”, in Time",
"text": "In screening an adviser, these should be your goals:\n—To determine whether he or she cares about helping clients or just goes through the motions […]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2005 June 12, Michael Kinsley, “No Smoking Gun”, in Washington Post",
"text": "The whole \"weapons of mass destruction\" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To do something in a mechanical, unreflective manner, especially as a matter of routine and without commitment or enthusiasm; to perform a task perfunctorily."
],
"id": "en-go_through_the_motions-en-verb-HEh1cspE",
"links": [
[
"mechanical",
"mechanical"
],
[
"unreflective",
"unreflective"
],
[
"routine",
"routine"
],
[
"commitment",
"commitment"
],
[
"enthusiasm",
"enthusiasm"
],
[
"perform",
"perform"
],
[
"task",
"task"
],
[
"perfunctorily",
"perfunctorily"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To do something in a mechanical, unreflective manner, especially as a matter of routine and without commitment or enthusiasm; to perform a task perfunctorily."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "autopilot"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "走過場"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "zǒu guòchǎng",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "走过场"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "fūyǎn",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "敷衍"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "suorittaa mekaanisesti"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-go through the motions.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/0f/En-au-go_through_the_motions.ogg/En-au-go_through_the_motions.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/En-au-go_through_the_motions.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "go through the motions"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "goes through the motions",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "going through the motions",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "went through the motions",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "gone through the motions",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "go<goes,,went,gone> through the motions"
},
"expansion": "go through the motions (third-person singular simple present goes through the motions, present participle going through the motions, simple past went through the motions, past participle gone through the motions)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "autopilot"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Mandarin terms with non-redundant manual transliterations",
"Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1905, Mark Twain, chapter 3, in The $30,000 Bequest",
"text": "Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the motions.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003 July 8, Jason Zweig, Benjamin Graham, “Get Rich Slowly: How to Pick a Financial Adviser”, in Time",
"text": "In screening an adviser, these should be your goals:\n—To determine whether he or she cares about helping clients or just goes through the motions […]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2005 June 12, Michael Kinsley, “No Smoking Gun”, in Washington Post",
"text": "The whole \"weapons of mass destruction\" concern was phony from the start, and the drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To do something in a mechanical, unreflective manner, especially as a matter of routine and without commitment or enthusiasm; to perform a task perfunctorily."
],
"links": [
[
"mechanical",
"mechanical"
],
[
"unreflective",
"unreflective"
],
[
"routine",
"routine"
],
[
"commitment",
"commitment"
],
[
"enthusiasm",
"enthusiasm"
],
[
"perform",
"perform"
],
[
"task",
"task"
],
[
"perfunctorily",
"perfunctorily"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To do something in a mechanical, unreflective manner, especially as a matter of routine and without commitment or enthusiasm; to perform a task perfunctorily."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "en-au-go through the motions.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/0f/En-au-go_through_the_motions.ogg/En-au-go_through_the_motions.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/En-au-go_through_the_motions.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "走過場"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "zǒu guòchǎng",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "走过场"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "fūyǎn",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "敷衍"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "do something in a mechanical manner",
"word": "suorittaa mekaanisesti"
}
],
"word": "go through the motions"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 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.