See not the sharpest knife in the drawer in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for not the sharpest knife in the drawer meaning in English (4.4kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "not the sharpest knives in the drawer",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "not the sharpest knives in the drawer"
},
"expansion": "not the sharpest knife in the drawer (plural not the sharpest knives in the drawer)",
"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"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"parents": [
"Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English euphemisms",
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},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English litotes",
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},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English negative polarity items",
"parents": [
"Negative polarity items",
"Terms by semantic function"
],
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},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"parents": [
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"Entry maintenance"
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}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1994 September 5, Richard Hoffer, “Get Smart!”, in Sports Illustrated",
"text": "You can block or tackle, or you can do some exotic things with a football cradled under your arm, but you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to book learning.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"text": "2000, Tami Hoag, Ashes to Ashes, →ISBN, page 378:",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"text": "2003,Lucille Bluth, Arrested Development, S:1 E:3 “And I know he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's sensitive, Michael,”\n“He fits in a lot of ways, but he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?”\n“Maybe he just plays it stupid so people expect less of him.”"
},
{
"ref": "2009 August 11, Paul Byrnes, “Tyson”, in Brisbane Times, Australia",
"text": "[A] man who has lost every dollar he ever won–somewhere north of $US300 million ($370 million)–and done three years for rape is possibly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor the most likeable.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2022, Lawrence S. Maisel, Robert J. Zwerling, Jesper H. Sorensen, AI-Enabled Analytics for Business: A Roadmap for Becoming an Analytics Powerhouse, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., page 192",
"text": "Intelligence = 1 / Title. The higher the level in the organization, the inversely less intelligent they are. Folk at the top have human skills and business savvy, but despite all the press, most are not the sharpest knives in the drawer—after all, that’s your job!",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Lacking in intelligence; dimwitted."
],
"id": "en-not_the_sharpest_knife_in_the_drawer-en-noun-KUm19ZQW",
"links": [
[
"humorous",
"humorous"
],
[
"Lacking",
"lacking"
],
[
"intelligence",
"intelligence"
],
[
"dimwitted",
"dimwitted"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(humorous, euphemistic) Lacking in intelligence; dimwitted."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "not the brightest bulb in the chandelier"
},
{
"word": "not the sharpest crayon in the box"
},
{
"word": "not the sharpest tool in the box"
},
{
"word": "not the sharpest tool in the shed"
},
{
"word": "dumb as a bag of hammers"
},
{
"word": "dumb as a box of rocks"
},
{
"word": "stupid"
}
],
"tags": [
"euphemistic",
"humorous"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ikke den skarpeste kniv i skuffen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ei penaalin terävin kynä"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ne pas avoir inventé le fil à couper le beurre"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "nicht der hellste Stern am Himmel"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "nicht das hellste Licht am Christbaum"
},
{
"code": "ga",
"lang": "Irish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ní hé is éirimiúla amuigh"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ikke den skarpeste kniven i skuffen"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "zakuty łeb"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "ne bléščet umóm",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "не бле́щет умо́м"
}
]
}
],
"word": "not the sharpest knife in the drawer"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "not the sharpest knives in the drawer",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "not the sharpest knives in the drawer"
},
"expansion": "not the sharpest knife in the drawer (plural not the sharpest knives in the drawer)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"English euphemisms",
"English humorous terms",
"English lemmas",
"English litotes",
"English multiword terms",
"English negative polarity items",
"English nouns",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1994 September 5, Richard Hoffer, “Get Smart!”, in Sports Illustrated",
"text": "You can block or tackle, or you can do some exotic things with a football cradled under your arm, but you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to book learning.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"text": "2000, Tami Hoag, Ashes to Ashes, →ISBN, page 378:",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"text": "2003,Lucille Bluth, Arrested Development, S:1 E:3 “And I know he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's sensitive, Michael,”\n“He fits in a lot of ways, but he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?”\n“Maybe he just plays it stupid so people expect less of him.”"
},
{
"ref": "2009 August 11, Paul Byrnes, “Tyson”, in Brisbane Times, Australia",
"text": "[A] man who has lost every dollar he ever won–somewhere north of $US300 million ($370 million)–and done three years for rape is possibly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor the most likeable.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2022, Lawrence S. Maisel, Robert J. Zwerling, Jesper H. Sorensen, AI-Enabled Analytics for Business: A Roadmap for Becoming an Analytics Powerhouse, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., page 192",
"text": "Intelligence = 1 / Title. The higher the level in the organization, the inversely less intelligent they are. Folk at the top have human skills and business savvy, but despite all the press, most are not the sharpest knives in the drawer—after all, that’s your job!",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Lacking in intelligence; dimwitted."
],
"links": [
[
"humorous",
"humorous"
],
[
"Lacking",
"lacking"
],
[
"intelligence",
"intelligence"
],
[
"dimwitted",
"dimwitted"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(humorous, euphemistic) Lacking in intelligence; dimwitted."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "not the brightest bulb in the chandelier"
},
{
"word": "not the sharpest crayon in the box"
},
{
"word": "not the sharpest tool in the box"
},
{
"word": "not the sharpest tool in the shed"
},
{
"word": "dumb as a bag of hammers"
},
{
"word": "dumb as a box of rocks"
},
{
"word": "stupid"
}
],
"tags": [
"euphemistic",
"humorous"
]
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ikke den skarpeste kniv i skuffen"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ei penaalin terävin kynä"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ne pas avoir inventé le fil à couper le beurre"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "nicht der hellste Stern am Himmel"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "nicht das hellste Licht am Christbaum"
},
{
"code": "ga",
"lang": "Irish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ní hé is éirimiúla amuigh"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "ikke den skarpeste kniven i skuffen"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "being stupid",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "zakuty łeb"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "ne bléščet umóm",
"sense": "being stupid",
"word": "не бле́щет умо́м"
}
],
"word": "not the sharpest knife in the drawer"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.