"king of the castle" meaning in English

See king of the castle in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-king of the castle.ogg [Australia] Forms: kings of the castle [plural], kings of the castles [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-|kings of the castle|kings of the castles}} king of the castle (usually uncountable, plural kings of the castle or kings of the castles)
  1. A children's game in which one player is located on something elevated and other players attempt to take his or her place. Tags: uncountable, usually Synonyms (children's game): king of the hill
    Sense id: en-king_of_the_castle-en-noun-UaFuXrr7 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 73 27 Disambiguation of "children's game": 93 7
  2. (idiomatic, by extension, sometimes sarcastic or derogatory) An individual who assumes a position of greater importance, authority, or prominence than others. Tags: broadly, derogatory, idiomatic, sarcastic, sometimes, uncountable, usually Synonyms (one who is of greater importance, authority, or prominence): important person
    Sense id: en-king_of_the_castle-en-noun-itJPBJZB Disambiguation of 'one who is of greater importance, authority, or prominence': 11 89

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for king of the castle meaning in English (3.9kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "kings of the castle",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "kings of the castles",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-",
        "2": "kings of the castle",
        "3": "kings of the castles"
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      "expansion": "king of the castle (usually uncountable, plural kings of the castle or kings of the castles)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "73 27",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1912, Arthur Quiller-Couch, chapter 2, in Hocken and Hunken",
          "text": "[A] throng of children came pouring from school. […] [T]hey were storming the sand-heap, pelting a king of the castle, who pelted back with handfuls.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A children's game in which one player is located on something elevated and other players attempt to take his or her place."
      ],
      "id": "en-king_of_the_castle-en-noun-UaFuXrr7",
      "links": [
        [
          "game",
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        [
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      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "93 7",
          "sense": "children's game",
          "word": "king of the hill"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable",
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      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983 April 30, Deirdre Bair, \"Enmity, Torment, Adversity\" (review of Voices: A Life of Frank O'Connor by James Matthews), New York Times (retrieved 3 Jan 2019)",
          "text": "Mr. Matthews, usually nonjudgmental when writing about O'Connor's domestic relations, can't resist calling him \"the king of the castle, the smug possessor of a bevy of three fine women absolutely de-voted to him.\""
        },
        {
          "ref": "1995 April 30, James Walsh, “Shoko Asahara: The Making of a Messiah”, in Time, retrieved 2019-01-03",
          "text": "[A] onetime classmate in Kumamoto said, \"I think Matsumoto is trying to create a closed society like the school for the blind he went to. He is trying to create a society separate from ordinary society in which he can become king of the castle.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998 November 3, Andy Farrell, “Golf: World stage awaits Monty's magic”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2019-01-03",
          "text": "Darren Clarke's impressive victory on Sunday at Montecastillo in the Volvo Masters, the season's finale, was good enough to leapfrog Lee Westwood into second place on the order of merit, but not to dislodge Monty as the king of the castle.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 June 18, Martin Knelman, “Music: Rufus does Judy and faces himself”, in The Star, Canada, retrieved 2019-01-03",
          "text": "Wainwright, who is composing the music, is partnered with Daniel MacIvor, who is writing the libretto. “Both Daniel and I are used to being king of the castle,” Rufus confides, “so we need a third party to give us a sense of perspective.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An individual who assumes a position of greater importance, authority, or prominence than others."
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      "id": "en-king_of_the_castle-en-noun-itJPBJZB",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension, sometimes sarcastic or derogatory) An individual who assumes a position of greater importance, authority, or prominence than others."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "11 89",
          "sense": "one who is of greater importance, authority, or prominence",
          "word": "important person"
        }
      ],
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        "idiomatic",
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "En-au-king of the castle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c8/En-au-king_of_the_castle.ogg/En-au-king_of_the_castle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/En-au-king_of_the_castle.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
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{
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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "kings of the castle",
      "tags": [
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      "tags": [
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      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1912, Arthur Quiller-Couch, chapter 2, in Hocken and Hunken",
          "text": "[A] throng of children came pouring from school. […] [T]hey were storming the sand-heap, pelting a king of the castle, who pelted back with handfuls.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
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        "A children's game in which one player is located on something elevated and other players attempt to take his or her place."
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        [
          "elevate",
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          "ref": "1983 April 30, Deirdre Bair, \"Enmity, Torment, Adversity\" (review of Voices: A Life of Frank O'Connor by James Matthews), New York Times (retrieved 3 Jan 2019)",
          "text": "Mr. Matthews, usually nonjudgmental when writing about O'Connor's domestic relations, can't resist calling him \"the king of the castle, the smug possessor of a bevy of three fine women absolutely de-voted to him.\""
        },
        {
          "ref": "1995 April 30, James Walsh, “Shoko Asahara: The Making of a Messiah”, in Time, retrieved 2019-01-03",
          "text": "[A] onetime classmate in Kumamoto said, \"I think Matsumoto is trying to create a closed society like the school for the blind he went to. He is trying to create a society separate from ordinary society in which he can become king of the castle.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998 November 3, Andy Farrell, “Golf: World stage awaits Monty's magic”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2019-01-03",
          "text": "Darren Clarke's impressive victory on Sunday at Montecastillo in the Volvo Masters, the season's finale, was good enough to leapfrog Lee Westwood into second place on the order of merit, but not to dislodge Monty as the king of the castle.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016 June 18, Martin Knelman, “Music: Rufus does Judy and faces himself”, in The Star, Canada, retrieved 2019-01-03",
          "text": "Wainwright, who is composing the music, is partnered with Daniel MacIvor, who is writing the libretto. “Both Daniel and I are used to being king of the castle,” Rufus confides, “so we need a third party to give us a sense of perspective.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An individual who assumes a position of greater importance, authority, or prominence than others."
      ],
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          "prominence",
          "prominence"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension, sometimes sarcastic or derogatory) An individual who assumes a position of greater importance, authority, or prominence than others."
      ],
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        "derogatory",
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      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c8/En-au-king_of_the_castle.ogg/En-au-king_of_the_castle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/En-au-king_of_the_castle.ogg",
      "tags": [
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "sense": "children's game",
      "word": "king of the hill"
    },
    {
      "sense": "one who is of greater importance, authority, or prominence",
      "word": "important person"
    }
  ],
  "word": "king of the castle"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.