See make bricks without straw in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for make bricks without straw meaning in English (3.6kB)
{
"etymology_text": "From Exodus 5:18: \"Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.\" (NIV)",
"forms": [
{
"form": "makes bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "making bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "make<,,made> bricks without straw"
},
"expansion": "make bricks without straw (third-person singular simple present makes bricks without straw, present participle making bricks without straw, simple past and past participle made bricks without straw)",
"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"
},
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{
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"name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Bricks",
"orig": "en:Bricks",
"parents": [
"Building materials",
"Construction",
"Materials",
"Architecture",
"Engineering",
"Manufacturing",
"Applied sciences",
"Art",
"Technology",
"Human activity",
"Sciences",
"Culture",
"All topics",
"Human behaviour",
"Society",
"Fundamental",
"Human"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1938, Jonas A. Jonasson, Bricks without straw: the story of Linfield College, page 168",
"text": "The founders did more than \"make bricks without straw; they dreamed of a great cathedral and laid the foundations for it.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008, Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, page 30",
"text": "To call on the owners of little farms, the tradesmen, labourers and sailors to pay their proportion of a [£20,000] tax, when perhaps there is not half that sum in circulation is something harder than being forced to make bricks without straw,” he wrote; \"it is to make them without clay.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Peter F. Serra, Snapshots of Inspiration, page 170",
"text": "The problems that we may find ourselves confronted with may be similar to a make bricks without straw condition, imposed by not only others but in large measure ourselves.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"id": "en-make_bricks_without_straw-en-verb-Lxl1HgwM",
"links": [
[
"accomplish",
"accomplish"
],
[
"without",
"without"
],
[
"material",
"material"
],
[
"unreasonable",
"unreasonable"
],
[
"impossible",
"impossible"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "make bricks without straws"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-make bricks without straw.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "make bricks without straw"
}
{
"etymology_text": "From Exodus 5:18: \"Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.\" (NIV)",
"forms": [
{
"form": "makes bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "making bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "made bricks without straw",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "make<,,made> bricks without straw"
},
"expansion": "make bricks without straw (third-person singular simple present makes bricks without straw, present participle making bricks without straw, simple past and past participle made bricks without straw)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"en:Bricks"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1938, Jonas A. Jonasson, Bricks without straw: the story of Linfield College, page 168",
"text": "The founders did more than \"make bricks without straw; they dreamed of a great cathedral and laid the foundations for it.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008, Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, page 30",
"text": "To call on the owners of little farms, the tradesmen, labourers and sailors to pay their proportion of a [£20,000] tax, when perhaps there is not half that sum in circulation is something harder than being forced to make bricks without straw,” he wrote; \"it is to make them without clay.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2014, Peter F. Serra, Snapshots of Inspiration, page 170",
"text": "The problems that we may find ourselves confronted with may be similar to a make bricks without straw condition, imposed by not only others but in large measure ourselves.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"links": [
[
"accomplish",
"accomplish"
],
[
"without",
"without"
],
[
"material",
"material"
],
[
"unreasonable",
"unreasonable"
],
[
"impossible",
"impossible"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To accomplish a task without the proper materials or under unreasonable conditions; to do the impossible."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-make bricks without straw.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/En-au-make_bricks_without_straw.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "make bricks without straws"
}
],
"word": "make bricks without straw"
}
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.