"jolly well" meaning in English

See jolly well in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adverb

Head templates: {{en-adv|-}} jolly well (not comparable)
  1. (UK, dated, emphatic, sometimes humorous) Certainly, very well. Tags: UK, dated, emphatic, humorous, not-comparable, sometimes
    Sense id: en-jolly_well-en-adv-~VKMvb7C Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
{
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "jolly well (not comparable)",
      "name": "en-adv"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
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          "source": "w"
        }
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "You jolly well deserved it.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1904, Edith Nesbit, The New Treasure Seekers, Chapter 1:",
          "text": "We never had a Christmas in the country before. It was simply ripping. And the long-lost love—her name was Miss Ashleigh, but we were allowed to call her Aunt Margaret even before the wedding made it really legal for us to do so—she and her jolly clergyman brother used to come over, and sometimes we went to the Cedars, where they live, and we had games and charades, and hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the village children, and everything you can jolly well think of.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1920, Eric Leadbitter, Rain Before Seven, page 122:",
          "text": "\"Oh, I shall pull it off. I shall jolly well have to succeed,\" said Michael light-heartedly; feeling unusually confident.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 26:",
          "text": "Adrian thought it worth while trying out his new slang. […] ‘That’s beastly talk, Thompson. Jolly well take it back or expect a good scragging.’",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 April 6, Philip Haigh, “Passenger numbers increase... and freight must follow”, in RAIL, number 954, page 51:",
          "text": "For most main lines, that's one or two extra trains every hour. \"We jolly well ought to be able to encompass that on a lot of lines,\" he suggests.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Certainly, very well."
      ],
      "id": "en-jolly_well-en-adv-~VKMvb7C",
      "links": [
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          "humorous",
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        [
          "Certainly",
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        [
          "very",
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        [
          "well",
          "well"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, dated, emphatic, sometimes humorous) Certainly, very well."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "UK",
        "dated",
        "emphatic",
        "humorous",
        "not-comparable",
        "sometimes"
      ]
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  "word": "jolly well"
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English adverbs",
        "English dated terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English uncomparable adverbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "You jolly well deserved it.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1904, Edith Nesbit, The New Treasure Seekers, Chapter 1:",
          "text": "We never had a Christmas in the country before. It was simply ripping. And the long-lost love—her name was Miss Ashleigh, but we were allowed to call her Aunt Margaret even before the wedding made it really legal for us to do so—she and her jolly clergyman brother used to come over, and sometimes we went to the Cedars, where they live, and we had games and charades, and hide-and-seek, and Devil in the Dark, which is a game girls pretend to like, and very few do really, and crackers and a Christmas-tree for the village children, and everything you can jolly well think of.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1920, Eric Leadbitter, Rain Before Seven, page 122:",
          "text": "\"Oh, I shall pull it off. I shall jolly well have to succeed,\" said Michael light-heartedly; feeling unusually confident.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 26:",
          "text": "Adrian thought it worth while trying out his new slang. […] ‘That’s beastly talk, Thompson. Jolly well take it back or expect a good scragging.’",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 April 6, Philip Haigh, “Passenger numbers increase... and freight must follow”, in RAIL, number 954, page 51:",
          "text": "For most main lines, that's one or two extra trains every hour. \"We jolly well ought to be able to encompass that on a lot of lines,\" he suggests.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Certainly, very well."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "Certainly",
          "certainly"
        ],
        [
          "very",
          "very"
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        [
          "well",
          "well"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, dated, emphatic, sometimes humorous) Certainly, very well."
      ],
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        "dated",
        "emphatic",
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        "not-comparable",
        "sometimes"
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  "word": "jolly well"
}

Download raw JSONL data for jolly well meaning in English (2.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (0c0c1f1 and 4230888). 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.

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