"how the sausage gets made" meaning in English

See how the sausage gets made in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Etymology: A reference to the aphorism "Anyone who loves the law or sausages should never watch either being made"; sausage-making often uses animal parts of which people would rather remain unaware. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} how the sausage gets made
  1. The unpleasant way in which a process or activity is carried on behind the scenes. Synonyms: how the sausage is made
    Sense id: en-how_the_sausage_gets_made-en-phrase-06cBWFXc Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for how the sausage gets made meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "A reference to the aphorism \"Anyone who loves the law or sausages should never watch either being made\"; sausage-making often uses animal parts of which people would rather remain unaware.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "how the sausage gets made",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2007, Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game, page 163",
          "text": "It is worlds away from conducting exciting operations, but it allows the officer to see \"how the sausage gets made\" and a stint in the post usually leads to a more desirable position.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Arthur S. Hayes, Press Critics are the Fifth Estate: Media Watchdogs in America, page 93",
          "text": "Nevertheless, reform-minded media professionals cannot seem to part with the idea that there is a substantial readership beyond those who subscribe to trade publications willing to spend money to read about how the sausage gets made in the news media business or to read critiques of press performance.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Heather Hale, How to Work the Film & TV Markets: A Guide for Content Creators",
          "text": "I wanted to divulge not only “how the sausage gets made” (i.e., how film and television properties are actually conveyed through the stages of development, financing, production, screening, and promotion around the world) but also to unveil the wizards behind the tiers of curtains.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The unpleasant way in which a process or activity is carried on behind the scenes."
      ],
      "id": "en-how_the_sausage_gets_made-en-phrase-06cBWFXc",
      "links": [
        [
          "process",
          "process"
        ],
        [
          "activity",
          "activity"
        ],
        [
          "behind the scenes",
          "behind the scenes"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "how the sausage is made"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "how the sausage gets made"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "A reference to the aphorism \"Anyone who loves the law or sausages should never watch either being made\"; sausage-making often uses animal parts of which people would rather remain unaware.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "how the sausage gets made",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2007, Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game, page 163",
          "text": "It is worlds away from conducting exciting operations, but it allows the officer to see \"how the sausage gets made\" and a stint in the post usually leads to a more desirable position.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Arthur S. Hayes, Press Critics are the Fifth Estate: Media Watchdogs in America, page 93",
          "text": "Nevertheless, reform-minded media professionals cannot seem to part with the idea that there is a substantial readership beyond those who subscribe to trade publications willing to spend money to read about how the sausage gets made in the news media business or to read critiques of press performance.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017, Heather Hale, How to Work the Film & TV Markets: A Guide for Content Creators",
          "text": "I wanted to divulge not only “how the sausage gets made” (i.e., how film and television properties are actually conveyed through the stages of development, financing, production, screening, and promotion around the world) but also to unveil the wizards behind the tiers of curtains.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The unpleasant way in which a process or activity is carried on behind the scenes."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "process",
          "process"
        ],
        [
          "activity",
          "activity"
        ],
        [
          "behind the scenes",
          "behind the scenes"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "how the sausage is made"
    }
  ],
  "word": "how the sausage gets made"
}

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.