"knuckle sandwich" meaning in English

See knuckle sandwich in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈnʌkəl ˈsæn(d)wɪdʒ/ [Received-Pronunciation], /-wɪtʃ/ [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈnʌkəl ˈsænˌ(d)wɪtʃ/ [General-American] Audio: en-au-knuckle sandwich.ogg [Australia] Forms: knuckle sandwiches [plural]
Etymology: The term describes a person’s fist connecting with another person’s mouth, as if the latter were eating a sandwich. Head templates: {{en-noun}} knuckle sandwich (plural knuckle sandwiches)
  1. (slang) A punch to the face, especially to the mouth. Wikipedia link: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton Tags: slang Translations (A punch to the face): knogmacka [common-gender] (Swedish)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for knuckle sandwich meaning in English (3.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "The term describes a person’s fist connecting with another person’s mouth, as if the latter were eating a sandwich.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "knuckle sandwiches",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "knuckle sandwich (plural knuckle sandwiches)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "knuck‧le"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1957, Jerome Chodorov, Joseph [Albert] Fields, Anniversary Waltz: Comedy in Three Acts, rev. edition, New York, N.Y.: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., →OCLC, page 20",
          "text": "OKKIE. (Raises his fist, kissing the knuckles menacingly—follows her to bottom of steps.) How would you like a knuckle sandwich?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002 April 7, Ira Berkow, “Sports of the times: A Babe Ruth myth is stirred up again”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 2015-05-27",
          "text": "Rather than an embrace, the Babe [Babe Ruth] would most assuredly like to have given a knuckle sandwich to the executives of that candy corps. Or hit them over the head with his 42-ounce bat.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Tony Young, Dalton Higgins, “Cleft Palate/Harelip”, in Much Master T: One VJ's Journey, Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, page 30",
          "text": "My brother Basil was probably the most protective of me. He would be willing to wallop anyone with a knuckle sandwich (knuckle sandwiches, not knives or guns, were big back then) who messed with me.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A punch to the face, especially to the mouth."
      ],
      "id": "en-knuckle_sandwich-en-noun-9gntHM3Z",
      "links": [
        [
          "punch",
          "punch"
        ],
        [
          "face",
          "face"
        ],
        [
          "mouth",
          "mouth"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang) A punch to the face, especially to the mouth."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "A punch to the face",
          "tags": [
            "common-gender"
          ],
          "word": "knogmacka"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈnʌkəl ˈsæn(d)wɪdʒ/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/-wɪtʃ/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈnʌkəl ˈsænˌ(d)wɪtʃ/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-knuckle sandwich.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/26/En-au-knuckle_sandwich.ogg/En-au-knuckle_sandwich.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/En-au-knuckle_sandwich.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "knuckle sandwich"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "The term describes a person’s fist connecting with another person’s mouth, as if the latter were eating a sandwich.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "knuckle sandwiches",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "knuckle sandwich (plural knuckle sandwiches)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "knuck‧le"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1957, Jerome Chodorov, Joseph [Albert] Fields, Anniversary Waltz: Comedy in Three Acts, rev. edition, New York, N.Y.: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., →OCLC, page 20",
          "text": "OKKIE. (Raises his fist, kissing the knuckles menacingly—follows her to bottom of steps.) How would you like a knuckle sandwich?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002 April 7, Ira Berkow, “Sports of the times: A Babe Ruth myth is stirred up again”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 2015-05-27",
          "text": "Rather than an embrace, the Babe [Babe Ruth] would most assuredly like to have given a knuckle sandwich to the executives of that candy corps. Or hit them over the head with his 42-ounce bat.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Tony Young, Dalton Higgins, “Cleft Palate/Harelip”, in Much Master T: One VJ's Journey, Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, page 30",
          "text": "My brother Basil was probably the most protective of me. He would be willing to wallop anyone with a knuckle sandwich (knuckle sandwiches, not knives or guns, were big back then) who messed with me.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A punch to the face, especially to the mouth."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "punch",
          "punch"
        ],
        [
          "face",
          "face"
        ],
        [
          "mouth",
          "mouth"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(slang) A punch to the face, especially to the mouth."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "slang"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈnʌkəl ˈsæn(d)wɪdʒ/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/-wɪtʃ/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈnʌkəl ˈsænˌ(d)wɪtʃ/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-knuckle sandwich.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/26/En-au-knuckle_sandwich.ogg/En-au-knuckle_sandwich.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/En-au-knuckle_sandwich.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "A punch to the face",
      "tags": [
        "common-gender"
      ],
      "word": "knogmacka"
    }
  ],
  "word": "knuckle sandwich"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 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.