See make a silk purse of a sow's ear in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for make a silk purse of a sow's ear meaning in English (3.5kB)
{
"etymology_text": "Coined by Stephen Gosson in 1579 in the book The Ephemerides of Phialo: Deuided Into Three Bookes p62v",
"forms": [
{
"form": "makes a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "making a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "made a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "made a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "make<,,made> a silk purse of a sow's ear"
},
"expansion": "make a silk purse of a sow's ear (third-person singular simple present makes a silk purse of a sow's ear, present participle making a silk purse of a sow's ear, simple past and past participle made a silk purse of a sow's ear)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with redundant transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1884, Charlotte M. Yonge, chapter 22, in The Armourer's Prentices",
"text": "\"He always was an unmannerly cub,\" said Master Headley, as he read the letter. \"Well, I've done my best to make a silk purse of a sow's ear!\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1997 May 23, Joanna Biddolph, “Mandelson has become PR’s new role model”, in PRWeek, UK, retrieved 2009-12-16",
"text": "PR people can make a silk purse of a sow's ear.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2001 January 6, Penny Jackson, “House & Home: On your marks. Get set. Sell!”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2009-12-16",
"text": "A smart development can make a silk purse of a sow's ear, and the effect on older properties can be quite dramatic.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To produce something refined, admirable, or valuable from something which is unrefined, unpleasant, or of little or no value."
],
"id": "en-make_a_silk_purse_of_a_sow's_ear-en-verb-AtnNiNZu",
"links": [
[
"refine",
"refine"
],
[
"admirable",
"admirable"
],
[
"valuable",
"valuable"
],
[
"unpleasant",
"unpleasant"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To produce something refined, admirable, or valuable from something which is unrefined, unpleasant, or of little or no value."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "put lipstick on a pig"
},
{
"word": "polish a turd"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "化腐朽為神奇"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "huà fǔxiǔ wéi shénqí",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "化腐朽为神奇"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"tags": [
"with-elative"
],
"word": "tehdä jotain hyödyllistä"
},
{
"code": "de",
"english": "profane",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "aus Scheiße Geld machen"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "cavare sangue da una rapa"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "cavar sangue da una rapa"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Stephen Gosson"
]
}
],
"word": "make a silk purse of a sow's ear"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Coined by Stephen Gosson in 1579 in the book The Ephemerides of Phialo: Deuided Into Three Bookes p62v",
"forms": [
{
"form": "makes a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "making a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "made a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "made a silk purse of a sow's ear",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "make<,,made> a silk purse of a sow's ear"
},
"expansion": "make a silk purse of a sow's ear (third-person singular simple present makes a silk purse of a sow's ear, present participle making a silk purse of a sow's ear, simple past and past participle made a silk purse of a sow's ear)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "put lipstick on a pig"
},
{
"word": "polish a turd"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1884, Charlotte M. Yonge, chapter 22, in The Armourer's Prentices",
"text": "\"He always was an unmannerly cub,\" said Master Headley, as he read the letter. \"Well, I've done my best to make a silk purse of a sow's ear!\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1997 May 23, Joanna Biddolph, “Mandelson has become PR’s new role model”, in PRWeek, UK, retrieved 2009-12-16",
"text": "PR people can make a silk purse of a sow's ear.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2001 January 6, Penny Jackson, “House & Home: On your marks. Get set. Sell!”, in Independent, UK, retrieved 2009-12-16",
"text": "A smart development can make a silk purse of a sow's ear, and the effect on older properties can be quite dramatic.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To produce something refined, admirable, or valuable from something which is unrefined, unpleasant, or of little or no value."
],
"links": [
[
"refine",
"refine"
],
[
"admirable",
"admirable"
],
[
"valuable",
"valuable"
],
[
"unpleasant",
"unpleasant"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To produce something refined, admirable, or valuable from something which is unrefined, unpleasant, or of little or no value."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"wikipedia": [
"Stephen Gosson"
]
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "化腐朽為神奇"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "huà fǔxiǔ wéi shénqí",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "化腐朽为神奇"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"tags": [
"with-elative"
],
"word": "tehdä jotain hyödyllistä"
},
{
"code": "de",
"english": "profane",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "aus Scheiße Geld machen"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "cavare sangue da una rapa"
},
{
"code": "it",
"lang": "Italian",
"sense": "to produce something refined, from something which is unrefined",
"word": "cavar sangue da una rapa"
}
],
"word": "make a silk purse of a sow's ear"
}
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.
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