"it is a wise child that knows his own father" meaning in English

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Proverb

Etymology: * From act 2, scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. * From The Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler. Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=}} it is a wise child that knows his own father, {{en-proverb}} it is a wise child that knows his own father
  1. One can never be sure of one's paternity.
    Sense id: en-it_is_a_wise_child_that_knows_his_own_father-en-proverb-l7fOKgD0 Categories (other): English proverbs

Download JSON data for it is a wise child that knows his own father meaning in English (1.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "* From act 2, scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.\n* From The Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "it is a wise child that knows his own father",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "it is a wise child that knows his own father",
      "name": "en-proverb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English proverbs",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1900, Samuel Butler, The Odyssey",
          "text": "\"My mother,\" answered Telemachus, \"tells me I am son to Ulysses, but it is a wise child that knows his own father.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One can never be sure of one's paternity."
      ],
      "id": "en-it_is_a_wise_child_that_knows_his_own_father-en-proverb-l7fOKgD0",
      "links": [
        [
          "paternity",
          "paternity"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "it is a wise child that knows his own father"
}

{
  "etymology_text": "* From act 2, scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.\n* From The Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "it is a wise child that knows his own father",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "it is a wise child that knows his own father",
      "name": "en-proverb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English proverbs",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1900, Samuel Butler, The Odyssey",
          "text": "\"My mother,\" answered Telemachus, \"tells me I am son to Ulysses, but it is a wise child that knows his own father.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One can never be sure of one's paternity."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "paternity",
          "paternity"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "it is a wise child that knows his own father"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-01 using wiktextract (0b52755 and 5cb0836). 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.