See night of the long knives in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for night of the long knives meaning in English (3.4kB)
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "de",
"3": "Nacht der langen Messer"
},
"expansion": "Calque of German Nacht der langen Messer",
"name": "calque"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Calque of German Nacht der langen Messer, name for the 1934 Night of the Long Knives in which the Nazis murdered various opponents. Reinforced by earlier English uses of the motif of long knives, as in phrases like the Treachery of the Long Knives (a pseudohistorical massacre of Celts by Anglo-Saxons), used since at least the 1800s.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "nights of the long knives",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "nights of the long knives"
},
"expansion": "night of the long knives (plural nights of the long knives)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1961, William Smith White, Majesty & mischief: a mixed tribute to F.D.R., page 77",
"text": "(It was to precede yet another night of the long knives—this one of Republican knives honed up for Truman and the new Truman-Democratic Party. But this latter would in some ways be actually a manifestation of secondary importance.)",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1970, Investors Chronicle and Stock Exchange Gazette, volume 13, page 11",
"text": "Although the business world has its “nights of the long knives,” the affluent are generally reluctant to be totally ruthless either in competition with one another or against individuals of lesser financial standing.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1971, United States Dept. of Defense, United States House Committee on Armed Services, United States-Vietnam relations, 1945-1967: study, page 29",
"text": "[…] was unable to fight, Americans didn't understand the Vietnamese, all whites must encourage only selected Vietnamese loyal to the French because the remainder would turn against all whites in another \"night of the long knives\" similar to that of 1946.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1988, Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo, The power dynamics of the Nigerian society: people, politics and power, page 17",
"text": "[…] while the architects watched hopelessly and helplessly. Again, it was a group of young Nigerian revolutionaries in military uniform who rushed to the rescue and tried to save the country from the experience of another night of the long knives.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008, The Health Service Journal",
"text": "[…] who understand 2008 NHS dynamics, and while some trusts have to strengthen their line-ups during the course of the application process, I would counsel against dramatic nights of the long knives.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A purge, in which opponents of a regime or political party are killed or removed."
],
"id": "en-night_of_the_long_knives-en-noun-ZZeRzmhT",
"links": [
[
"purge",
"purge"
]
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "night of long knives"
},
{
"word": "Night of Long Knives"
},
{
"word": "Night of the Long Knives"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "purge",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Nacht der langen Messer"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "purge",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "noc długich noży"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Night of the Long Knives",
"Treachery of the Long Knives"
]
}
],
"word": "night of the long knives"
}
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "de",
"3": "Nacht der langen Messer"
},
"expansion": "Calque of German Nacht der langen Messer",
"name": "calque"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Calque of German Nacht der langen Messer, name for the 1934 Night of the Long Knives in which the Nazis murdered various opponents. Reinforced by earlier English uses of the motif of long knives, as in phrases like the Treachery of the Long Knives (a pseudohistorical massacre of Celts by Anglo-Saxons), used since at least the 1800s.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "nights of the long knives",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "nights of the long knives"
},
"expansion": "night of the long knives (plural nights of the long knives)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms calqued from German",
"English terms derived from German",
"English terms with quotations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1961, William Smith White, Majesty & mischief: a mixed tribute to F.D.R., page 77",
"text": "(It was to precede yet another night of the long knives—this one of Republican knives honed up for Truman and the new Truman-Democratic Party. But this latter would in some ways be actually a manifestation of secondary importance.)",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1970, Investors Chronicle and Stock Exchange Gazette, volume 13, page 11",
"text": "Although the business world has its “nights of the long knives,” the affluent are generally reluctant to be totally ruthless either in competition with one another or against individuals of lesser financial standing.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1971, United States Dept. of Defense, United States House Committee on Armed Services, United States-Vietnam relations, 1945-1967: study, page 29",
"text": "[…] was unable to fight, Americans didn't understand the Vietnamese, all whites must encourage only selected Vietnamese loyal to the French because the remainder would turn against all whites in another \"night of the long knives\" similar to that of 1946.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1988, Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo, The power dynamics of the Nigerian society: people, politics and power, page 17",
"text": "[…] while the architects watched hopelessly and helplessly. Again, it was a group of young Nigerian revolutionaries in military uniform who rushed to the rescue and tried to save the country from the experience of another night of the long knives.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2008, The Health Service Journal",
"text": "[…] who understand 2008 NHS dynamics, and while some trusts have to strengthen their line-ups during the course of the application process, I would counsel against dramatic nights of the long knives.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A purge, in which opponents of a regime or political party are killed or removed."
],
"links": [
[
"purge",
"purge"
]
],
"wikipedia": [
"Night of the Long Knives",
"Treachery of the Long Knives"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "night of long knives"
},
{
"word": "Night of Long Knives"
},
{
"word": "Night of the Long Knives"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "purge",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "Nacht der langen Messer"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "purge",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "noc długich noży"
}
],
"word": "night of the long knives"
}
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.