"man in black" meaning in English

See man in black in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: men in black [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|men in black}} man in black (plural men in black)
  1. (sports, informal) The referee. Tags: informal Categories (topical): Sports, People
    Sense id: en-man_in_black-en-noun-tIbEf-s2 Disambiguation of People: 59 41 Topics: hobbies, lifestyle, sports
  2. (ufology) A covert government operative, wearing a black suit and black aviator sunglasses, believed by conspiracy theorists to cover up UFO incidents. Categories (topical): Ufology, Conspiracy theories, Ufology
    Sense id: en-man_in_black-en-noun-A5cDBNwD Disambiguation of Conspiracy theories: 18 82 Disambiguation of Ufology: 10 90 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 30 70 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 22 78 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 24 76 Topics: human-sciences, mysticism, mythology, philosophy, sciences, ufology

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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      "glosses": [
        "The referee."
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        "(sports, informal) The referee."
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          "text": "Coordinate term: black helicopter"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1958, The Australian Saucer Record, volume 4, number 4, page 1:",
          "text": "Ever since the cessation of activity by Albert Bender in 1954, and followed closely by a few others, whose disappear[a]nce though less spectacular, from this field of work, caused a stir among the then active workers; the words he used in reference to his case \"that he had been visited by three men in black, who demanded that he cease his investigations\" left many to conjecture as to who they were, and what was their reason and who they represented.",
          "type": "quote"
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        {
          "ref": "1991 March 26, John A. Keel, “Who are the UFO silencers?”, in Weekly World News, volume 12, number 25, page 8:",
          "text": "Often they arrive at the scene of a UFO landing before those involves have had a chance to tell their story to the authorities, indicating that these Men-in-Black can read – as well as CONTROL – minds.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1995, James L. Thompson, Alien encounters: the deception menace, Cedar Fort, page 52:",
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          "ref": "1995, John A. Saliba, “UFO Contactee Phenomena from a Sociopsychological Perspective: A Review”, in The Gods have landed: new religions from other worlds, SUNY Press, page 218:",
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        {
          "ref": "1991 March 26, John A. Keel, “Who are the UFO silencers?”, in Weekly World News, volume 12, number 25, page 8:",
          "text": "Often they arrive at the scene of a UFO landing before those involves have had a chance to tell their story to the authorities, indicating that these Men-in-Black can read – as well as CONTROL – minds.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1995, James L. Thompson, Alien encounters: the deception menace, Cedar Fort, page 52:",
          "text": "In many UFO sightings in which evidence of the sighting is claimed to exist, government \"men in black\" are reported to appear at the witnesses' doors demanding the evidence and threatening witnesses in the event they divulge any information regarding their sighting.",
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        {
          "ref": "1995, John A. Saliba, “UFO Contactee Phenomena from a Sociopsychological Perspective: A Review”, in The Gods have landed: new religions from other worlds, SUNY Press, page 218:",
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        "(ufology) A covert government operative, wearing a black suit and black aviator sunglasses, believed by conspiracy theorists to cover up UFO incidents."
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Download raw JSONL data for man in black meaning in English (3.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). 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.