must have killed a Chinaman in English

[Show JSON for post-processed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for post-processed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Referring to a putative, and otherwise unrecorded, Anglo-Australian superstition that killing a Chinese person brought about bad luck.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase",
        "head": "must have killed a Chinaman"
      },
      "expansion": "must have killed a Chinaman",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Australian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1925, L. M. Newton, The Story of the Twelfth: A Record of the 12th Battalion, page 132",
          "text": "It appeared as though someone in the Battalion must have killed a Chinaman, as the weather continued rough and stormy, with strong wind.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A jocular explanation for bad luck."
      ],
      "id": "en-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman-en-phrase--ZDHkunk",
      "links": [
        [
          "bad luck",
          "bad luck#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Australia, dated, now offensive) A jocular explanation for bad luck."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia",
        "dated",
        "offensive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-must have killed a Chinaman.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9a/En-au-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman.ogg/En-au-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/En-au-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "must have killed a Chinaman"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Referring to a putative, and otherwise unrecorded, Anglo-Australian superstition that killing a Chinese person brought about bad luck.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase",
        "head": "must have killed a Chinaman"
      },
      "expansion": "must have killed a Chinaman",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Australian English",
        "English dated terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English offensive terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1925, L. M. Newton, The Story of the Twelfth: A Record of the 12th Battalion, page 132",
          "text": "It appeared as though someone in the Battalion must have killed a Chinaman, as the weather continued rough and stormy, with strong wind.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A jocular explanation for bad luck."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "bad luck",
          "bad luck#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Australia, dated, now offensive) A jocular explanation for bad luck."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia",
        "dated",
        "offensive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-must have killed a Chinaman.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9a/En-au-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman.ogg/En-au-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/En-au-must_have_killed_a_Chinaman.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "must have killed a Chinaman"
}

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

"must have killed a Chinaman" meaning in English

Phrase