"grease monkey" meaning in English

See grease monkey in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-grease monkey.ogg [Australia] Forms: grease monkeys [plural]
Etymology: Dates to at least 1928. May have originated during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, when children were used to grease the large rotating axles which were used to transfer power from one centralized steam engine to all of the machines on the factory floor. These children, covered in grease and crawling in the tight spaces in the ceilings, were equated with monkeys. Head templates: {{en-noun}} grease monkey (plural grease monkeys)
  1. (idiomatic, slang) A mechanic, often with the specific connotation of an automobile mechanic. Tags: idiomatic, slang Categories (topical): Occupations, People Related terms: greaser, powder monkey, rigging monkey, code monkey, oil trash, shade tree mechanic Translations (a mechanic): rasva-apina (Finnish), rasvari (Finnish), mécano [masculine] (French)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for grease monkey meaning in English (2.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Dates to at least 1928. May have originated during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, when children were used to grease the large rotating axles which were used to transfer power from one centralized steam engine to all of the machines on the factory floor. These children, covered in grease and crawling in the tight spaces in the ceilings, were equated with monkeys.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "grease monkeys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "grease monkey (plural grease monkeys)",
      "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 entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Occupations",
          "orig": "en:Occupations",
          "parents": [
            "People",
            "Work",
            "Human",
            "Human activity",
            "All topics",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I'm no grease monkey, but I can manage to change out my engine's spark plugs without assistance."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A mechanic, often with the specific connotation of an automobile mechanic."
      ],
      "id": "en-grease_monkey-en-noun-bXuXpGd4",
      "links": [
        [
          "mechanic",
          "mechanic"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, slang) A mechanic, often with the specific connotation of an automobile mechanic."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "greaser"
        },
        {
          "word": "powder monkey"
        },
        {
          "word": "rigging monkey"
        },
        {
          "word": "code monkey"
        },
        {
          "word": "oil trash"
        },
        {
          "word": "shade tree mechanic"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "slang"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "a mechanic",
          "word": "rasva-apina"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "a mechanic",
          "word": "rasvari"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "a mechanic",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "mécano"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-grease monkey.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b0/En-au-grease_monkey.ogg/En-au-grease_monkey.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/En-au-grease_monkey.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "grease monkey"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Dates to at least 1928. May have originated during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, when children were used to grease the large rotating axles which were used to transfer power from one centralized steam engine to all of the machines on the factory floor. These children, covered in grease and crawling in the tight spaces in the ceilings, were equated with monkeys.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "grease monkeys",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "grease monkey (plural grease monkeys)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "greaser"
    },
    {
      "word": "powder monkey"
    },
    {
      "word": "rigging monkey"
    },
    {
      "word": "code monkey"
    },
    {
      "word": "oil trash"
    },
    {
      "word": "shade tree mechanic"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "en:Occupations",
        "en:People"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I'm no grease monkey, but I can manage to change out my engine's spark plugs without assistance."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A mechanic, often with the specific connotation of an automobile mechanic."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "mechanic",
          "mechanic"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, slang) A mechanic, often with the specific connotation of an automobile mechanic."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-grease monkey.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b0/En-au-grease_monkey.ogg/En-au-grease_monkey.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/En-au-grease_monkey.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "a mechanic",
      "word": "rasva-apina"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "a mechanic",
      "word": "rasvari"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "a mechanic",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "mécano"
    }
  ],
  "word": "grease monkey"
}

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.