See know which side one's bread is buttered on in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for know which side one's bread is buttered on meaning in English (3.3kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "knows which side one's bread is buttered on",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "knowing which side one's bread is buttered on",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "knew which side one's bread was buttered on",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "known which side one's bread was buttered on",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "know<,,knew,known> which side one's bread is<is,is,was> buttered on"
},
"expansion": "know which side one's bread is buttered on (third-person singular simple present knows which side one's bread is buttered on, present participle knowing which side one's bread is buttered on, simple past knew which side one's bread was buttered on, past participle known which side one's bread was buttered on)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
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"Entry maintenance"
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"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1822, Sir Walter Scott, chapter I, in The Fortunes of Nigel",
"text": "“Pshaw!” answered his mercurial companion; “he knows on which side his bread is buttered, and I warrant you has not lived so long among Englishmen, and by Englishmen, to quarrel with us for bearing an English mind.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1909, Jack London, chapter XXIX, in Martin Eden",
"text": "They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very few of them are crafty. The only wise Republicans are the millionnaires and their conscious henchmen. They know which side their bread is buttered on, and they know why.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": ", Episode 16",
"text": "He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals."
},
{
"ref": "2008, Jerry Moriarity, Picking the Bones of Eleven Presidents and Others",
"text": "The crowd, which included many children, cheered when Truman confided with a smile, “They know what side their bread is buttered on.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003 October 9, Ken Fisher, “Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition, cache boost for everyman”, in Ars Technica",
"text": "On the other hand, the decision to beef up the standard fare without raising prices is a signal that Intel knows which side of the bread is buttered.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To be aware of where one's interests lie in a situation."
],
"id": "en-know_which_side_one's_bread_is_buttered_on-en-verb-pbyxOSu-",
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[
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],
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To be aware of where one's interests lie in a situation."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "butter one's bread on both sides"
}
],
"tags": [
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]
}
],
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"tags": [
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],
"word": "know which side one's bread is buttered on"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "knows which side one's bread is buttered on",
"tags": [
"present",
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},
{
"form": "knowing which side one's bread is buttered on",
"tags": [
"participle",
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]
},
{
"form": "knew which side one's bread was buttered on",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "known which side one's bread was buttered on",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "know<,,knew,known> which side one's bread is<is,is,was> buttered on"
},
"expansion": "know which side one's bread is buttered on (third-person singular simple present knows which side one's bread is buttered on, present participle knowing which side one's bread is buttered on, simple past knew which side one's bread was buttered on, past participle known which side one's bread was buttered on)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "butter one's bread on both sides"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1822, Sir Walter Scott, chapter I, in The Fortunes of Nigel",
"text": "“Pshaw!” answered his mercurial companion; “he knows on which side his bread is buttered, and I warrant you has not lived so long among Englishmen, and by Englishmen, to quarrel with us for bearing an English mind.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1909, Jack London, chapter XXIX, in Martin Eden",
"text": "They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very few of them are crafty. The only wise Republicans are the millionnaires and their conscious henchmen. They know which side their bread is buttered on, and they know why.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": ", Episode 16",
"text": "He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals."
},
{
"ref": "2008, Jerry Moriarity, Picking the Bones of Eleven Presidents and Others",
"text": "The crowd, which included many children, cheered when Truman confided with a smile, “They know what side their bread is buttered on.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2003 October 9, Ken Fisher, “Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition, cache boost for everyman”, in Ars Technica",
"text": "On the other hand, the decision to beef up the standard fare without raising prices is a signal that Intel knows which side of the bread is buttered.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To be aware of where one's interests lie in a situation."
],
"links": [
[
"aware",
"aware"
],
[
"interest",
"interest"
],
[
"situation",
"situation"
]
],
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"(idiomatic) To be aware of where one's interests lie in a situation."
],
"tags": [
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],
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"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/En-au-know_which_side_one%27s_bread_is_buttered_on.ogg",
"tags": [
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"text": "Audio (AU)"
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],
"word": "know which side one's bread is buttered on"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 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.