See on the fritz in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for on the fritz meaning in English (3.6kB)
{
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en"
},
"expansion": "Unknown",
"name": "unk"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "de",
"2": "Fritz"
},
"expansion": "Fritz",
"name": "m"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"nocap": "1"
},
"expansion": "onomatopoeic",
"name": "onomatopoeic"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Unknown. Attested from 1902, originally meaning “in a bad way” or “in bad condition”, malfunctioning of an appliance. Perhaps from German name.\nFritz, or onomatopoeic (here, imitating the sound of electric sparks jumping).",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "prepositional phrase"
},
"expansion": "on the fritz",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "prep_phrase",
"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 onomatopoeias",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Northern US English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"derived": [
{
"alt": "1910s",
"tags": [
"obsolete"
],
"word": "fritz up"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "I'd record it, but my tape deck is on the fritz again.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "My washing machine has gone on the fritz, and I have a load of muddy clothes to clean.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2000 November 5, Bob Morris, “Don't Spill It on Me”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "Actually, no one had noticed, from what I could tell, though I was alarmed to hear about it. Why was our pilot telling us about questionable brakes and a computer on the fritz when we still had a landing to worry about five hours ahead?",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2004, Lisa Marie Rice, Woman On the Run, page 32",
"text": "No ′40s movie heroine worth the name would have a house that let in gusts of gelid air, had a heating system that went on the fritz constantly and leaked.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Nero Blanc, Death on the Diagonal, page 191",
"text": "Or your cell-phone reception went on the fritz. We know how often that happens.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Ralph Bowersox, Ralph's True Stories: Entertaining Chronicles of Life in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, Late 1920s through the Present Day, page 185",
"text": "Some time ago, a tenant called me and said her refrigerator was on the fritz. I had a spare, so I took it down to her and exchanged it for her old one.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Out of order; malfunctioning; broken."
],
"id": "en-on_the_fritz-en-prep_phrase-AN~rDqBB",
"links": [
[
"Out of order",
"out of order"
],
[
"malfunctioning",
"malfunctioning"
],
[
"broken",
"broken"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(of electrical or mechanical appliances, idiomatic, Northern US) Out of order; malfunctioning; broken."
],
"raw_tags": [
"of electrical or mechanical appliances"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "fritzed"
},
{
"tags": [
"Australian"
],
"word": "bung"
},
{
"tags": [
"Australia",
"UK"
],
"word": "on the blink"
},
{
"tags": [
"offensive"
],
"word": "spaz"
}
],
"tags": [
"Northern-US",
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "i udu"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "kaput"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "kaputt"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "hin"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"note": "szwankować impf (means more literally \"be on the fritz\" as a verb)",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Michael Quinion"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"rhymes": "-ɪts"
}
],
"word": "on the fritz"
}
{
"derived": [
{
"alt": "1910s",
"tags": [
"obsolete"
],
"word": "fritz up"
}
],
"etymology_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en"
},
"expansion": "Unknown",
"name": "unk"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "de",
"2": "Fritz"
},
"expansion": "Fritz",
"name": "m"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"nocap": "1"
},
"expansion": "onomatopoeic",
"name": "onomatopoeic"
}
],
"etymology_text": "Unknown. Attested from 1902, originally meaning “in a bad way” or “in bad condition”, malfunctioning of an appliance. Perhaps from German name.\nFritz, or onomatopoeic (here, imitating the sound of electric sparks jumping).",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "prepositional phrase"
},
"expansion": "on the fritz",
"name": "head"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "prep_phrase",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English onomatopoeias",
"English prepositional phrases",
"English terms with quotations",
"English terms with unknown etymologies",
"English terms with usage examples",
"Northern US English",
"Rhymes:English/ɪts",
"Rhymes:English/ɪts/3 syllables"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "I'd record it, but my tape deck is on the fritz again.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "My washing machine has gone on the fritz, and I have a load of muddy clothes to clean.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2000 November 5, Bob Morris, “Don't Spill It on Me”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
"text": "Actually, no one had noticed, from what I could tell, though I was alarmed to hear about it. Why was our pilot telling us about questionable brakes and a computer on the fritz when we still had a landing to worry about five hours ahead?",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2004, Lisa Marie Rice, Woman On the Run, page 32",
"text": "No ′40s movie heroine worth the name would have a house that let in gusts of gelid air, had a heating system that went on the fritz constantly and leaked.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Nero Blanc, Death on the Diagonal, page 191",
"text": "Or your cell-phone reception went on the fritz. We know how often that happens.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2010, Ralph Bowersox, Ralph's True Stories: Entertaining Chronicles of Life in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, Late 1920s through the Present Day, page 185",
"text": "Some time ago, a tenant called me and said her refrigerator was on the fritz. I had a spare, so I took it down to her and exchanged it for her old one.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Out of order; malfunctioning; broken."
],
"links": [
[
"Out of order",
"out of order"
],
[
"malfunctioning",
"malfunctioning"
],
[
"broken",
"broken"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(of electrical or mechanical appliances, idiomatic, Northern US) Out of order; malfunctioning; broken."
],
"raw_tags": [
"of electrical or mechanical appliances"
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "fritzed"
},
{
"tags": [
"Australian"
],
"word": "bung"
},
{
"tags": [
"Australia",
"UK"
],
"word": "on the blink"
},
{
"tags": [
"offensive"
],
"word": "spaz"
}
],
"tags": [
"Northern-US",
"idiomatic"
],
"wikipedia": [
"Michael Quinion"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"rhymes": "-ɪts"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "i udu"
},
{
"code": "da",
"lang": "Danish",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "kaput"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "kaputt"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning",
"word": "hin"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"note": "szwankować impf (means more literally \"be on the fritz\" as a verb)",
"sense": "out of order, malfunctioning"
}
],
"word": "on the fritz"
}
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.