"mend fences" meaning in English

See mend fences in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: mends fences [present, singular, third-person], mending fences [participle, present], mended fences [participle, past], mended fences [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=mend fences}} mend fences (third-person singular simple present mends fences, present participle mending fences, simple past and past participle mended fences)
  1. (idiomatic) To repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: fence-mending Translations (Translations): limar asperezas (Spanish)
    Sense id: en-mend_fences-en-verb-Oo665-FQ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for mend fences meaning in English (2.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "mends fences",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "mending fences",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "mended fences",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "mended fences",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "mend fences"
      },
      "expansion": "mend fences (third-person singular simple present mends fences, present participle mending fences, simple past and past participle mended fences)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I don't think he was very happy with my work, so I'm going to talk to him and try to mend fences.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Elinor Lipman, The Family Man, HarperCollins, page 23",
          "text": "And furthermore, just because I agree to take a walk doesn't mean we've mended fences. But he doesn't pick up.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 September 3, Justin McCurry, “Japan's Shinzo Abe appoints pro-China MPs in bid to mend fences with Beijing”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has signalled a rare attempt to mend fences with China when he appointed two MPs considered friendly towards Beijing to two senior posts in his governing Liberal Democratic party (LDP).",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap."
      ],
      "id": "en-mend_fences-en-verb-Oo665-FQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "repair",
          "repair"
        ],
        [
          "damage",
          "damage"
        ],
        [
          "friendship",
          "friendship"
        ],
        [
          "relationship",
          "relationship"
        ],
        [
          "disagreement",
          "disagreement"
        ],
        [
          "mishap",
          "mishap"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "fence-mending"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "limar asperezas"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "mend fences"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "mends fences",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "mending fences",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "mended fences",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "mended fences",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "mend fences"
      },
      "expansion": "mend fences (third-person singular simple present mends fences, present participle mending fences, simple past and past participle mended fences)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "fence-mending"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs",
        "Translation table header lacks gloss"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I don't think he was very happy with my work, so I'm going to talk to him and try to mend fences.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Elinor Lipman, The Family Man, HarperCollins, page 23",
          "text": "And furthermore, just because I agree to take a walk doesn't mean we've mended fences. But he doesn't pick up.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 September 3, Justin McCurry, “Japan's Shinzo Abe appoints pro-China MPs in bid to mend fences with Beijing”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has signalled a rare attempt to mend fences with China when he appointed two MPs considered friendly towards Beijing to two senior posts in his governing Liberal Democratic party (LDP).",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "repair",
          "repair"
        ],
        [
          "damage",
          "damage"
        ],
        [
          "friendship",
          "friendship"
        ],
        [
          "relationship",
          "relationship"
        ],
        [
          "disagreement",
          "disagreement"
        ],
        [
          "mishap",
          "mishap"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "limar asperezas"
    }
  ],
  "word": "mend fences"
}

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.