"needlestack" meaning in English

See needlestack in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: needlestacks [plural]
Etymology: Blend of needle + haystack, from the metaphor of a needle in a haystack. Etymology templates: {{blend|en|needle|haystack}} Blend of needle + haystack Head templates: {{en-noun}} needlestack (plural needlestacks)
  1. (figurative) A stack of needles. Represents the task of finding one thing among a large number of very similar things. Tags: figuratively
    Sense id: en-needlestack-en-noun-P-z5fVSw Categories (other): English blends, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for needlestack meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "needle",
        "3": "haystack"
      },
      "expansion": "Blend of needle + haystack",
      "name": "blend"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Blend of needle + haystack, from the metaphor of a needle in a haystack.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "needlestacks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "needlestack (plural needlestacks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English blends",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1988 April 15, James Krohe Jr., “Where Has All the Flora Gone?”, in Chicago Reader",
          "text": "Unless their flag of a flower is waving, finding such plants is like finding a needle in a needlestack.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Dennis Rumley, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Geopolitical Orientations, Regionalism And Security In The Indian Ocean, page 43",
          "text": "In those decades of European peace and unchallenged British ascendancy, this small number of ships was enough to keep watch on the French ports and the major sea routes of the world, but not to hunt for needles in needlestacks and make all slavers and pirates quake with fear.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A stack of needles. Represents the task of finding one thing among a large number of very similar things."
      ],
      "id": "en-needlestack-en-noun-P-z5fVSw",
      "links": [
        [
          "needle",
          "needle"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) A stack of needles. Represents the task of finding one thing among a large number of very similar things."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "needlestack"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "needle",
        "3": "haystack"
      },
      "expansion": "Blend of needle + haystack",
      "name": "blend"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Blend of needle + haystack, from the metaphor of a needle in a haystack.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "needlestacks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "needlestack (plural needlestacks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English blends",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1988 April 15, James Krohe Jr., “Where Has All the Flora Gone?”, in Chicago Reader",
          "text": "Unless their flag of a flower is waving, finding such plants is like finding a needle in a needlestack.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Dennis Rumley, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Geopolitical Orientations, Regionalism And Security In The Indian Ocean, page 43",
          "text": "In those decades of European peace and unchallenged British ascendancy, this small number of ships was enough to keep watch on the French ports and the major sea routes of the world, but not to hunt for needles in needlestacks and make all slavers and pirates quake with fear.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A stack of needles. Represents the task of finding one thing among a large number of very similar things."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "needle",
          "needle"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) A stack of needles. Represents the task of finding one thing among a large number of very similar things."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "needlestack"
}

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.