See know which end is up in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for know which end is up meaning in English (3.8kB)
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{
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"2": "up"
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"etymology_text": "From the common marking this end up on parcels to guide proper transport.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "knows which end is up",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
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},
{
"form": "knowing which end is up",
"tags": [
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},
{
"form": "knew which end is up",
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{
"form": "known which end is up",
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"expansion": "know which end is up (third-person singular simple present knows which end is up, present participle knowing which end is up, simple past knew which end is up, past participle known which end is up)",
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
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"examples": [
{
"text": "He was too stoned to know which end was up.",
"type": "example"
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{
"ref": "1992, Dorothy Garlock, Glorious Dawn",
"text": "He's so in love, he doesn't know which end is up.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2005, John C. Hefley, Failure Equals Death, page 29",
"text": "“I'll gladly take criticism from a cop who knows which end is up and isn't afraid to do the job the way it should be done.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Gordon Lish, “The Friend”, in Collected Fictions, page 243",
"text": "[B]elieve me, she is some catch for the right boy—for a boy which knows which end is up.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Richard North Patterson, Silent Witness, page 277",
"text": "“When someone doesn't know which end is up, who knows why they do things.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Catherine McGuinness, Emperors' Clothes",
"text": "The whole company is in disarray! Nobody knows which end is up.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Synonym of know one's stuff, especially in the context of possessing sound judgment or common sense."
],
"id": "en-know_which_end_is_up-en-verb-lNyvpx9N",
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"(idiomatic) Synonym of know one's stuff, especially in the context of possessing sound judgment or common sense."
],
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"word": "know one's way around"
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"word": "not know which end is up"
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{
"word": "know which way is up"
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"audio": "En-au-know which end is up.ogg",
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"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/En-au-know_which_end_is_up.ogg",
"tags": [
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"text": "Audio (AU)"
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],
"word": "know which end is up"
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{
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"2": "up"
},
"expansion": "up",
"name": "m"
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],
"etymology_text": "From the common marking this end up on parcels to guide proper transport.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "knows which end is up",
"tags": [
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{
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{
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{
"form": "known which end is up",
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],
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"word": "not know which end is up"
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"examples": [
{
"text": "He was too stoned to know which end was up.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1992, Dorothy Garlock, Glorious Dawn",
"text": "He's so in love, he doesn't know which end is up.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2005, John C. Hefley, Failure Equals Death, page 29",
"text": "“I'll gladly take criticism from a cop who knows which end is up and isn't afraid to do the job the way it should be done.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Gordon Lish, “The Friend”, in Collected Fictions, page 243",
"text": "[B]elieve me, she is some catch for the right boy—for a boy which knows which end is up.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Richard North Patterson, Silent Witness, page 277",
"text": "“When someone doesn't know which end is up, who knows why they do things.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2011, Catherine McGuinness, Emperors' Clothes",
"text": "The whole company is in disarray! Nobody knows which end is up.",
"type": "quotation"
}
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"Synonym of know one's stuff, especially in the context of possessing sound judgment or common sense."
],
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"especially",
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"(idiomatic) Synonym of know one's stuff, especially in the context of possessing sound judgment or common sense."
],
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"tags": [
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"tags": [
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],
"synonyms": [
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"word": "know which way is up"
}
],
"word": "know which end is up"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c 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.