"one of those things" meaning in English

See one of those things in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-one of those things.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|!|head=one of those things}} one of those things (plural not attested)
  1. (idiomatic, often preceded by just) An unfortunate, but unavoidable, event. Tags: idiomatic, no-plural Translations (unfortunate but unavoidable event): 不可避免的事 (bùkěbìmiǎn de shì) (Chinese Mandarin), huonoa tuuria (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-one_of_those_things-en-noun-fMp6nZSv Disambiguation of 'unfortunate but unavoidable event': 97 3
  2. (idiomatic, often preceded by just) A strange or surprising event for which an explanation is unavailable or not worth pursuing. Tags: idiomatic, no-plural
    Sense id: en-one_of_those_things-en-noun-QWy4nRYh Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English nouns with unattested plurals Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 72 Disambiguation of English nouns with unattested plurals: 27 73

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for one of those things meaning in English (2.5kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "!",
        "head": "one of those things"
      },
      "expansion": "one of those things (plural not attested)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "It was just one of those things: I spent an hour in traffic and then found that the shop was closed."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An unfortunate, but unavoidable, event."
      ],
      "id": "en-one_of_those_things-en-noun-fMp6nZSv",
      "links": [
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          "just#English"
        ],
        [
          "unfortunate",
          "unfortunate"
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        [
          "unavoidable",
          "unavoidable"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "often preceded by just",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often preceded by just) An unfortunate, but unavoidable, event."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "no-plural"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "bùkěbìmiǎn de shì",
          "sense": "unfortunate but unavoidable event",
          "word": "不可避免的事"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "unfortunate but unavoidable event",
          "word": "huonoa tuuria"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "28 72",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "27 73",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English nouns with unattested plurals",
          "parents": [
            "Nouns with unattested plurals",
            "Nouns",
            "Lemmas"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1959, Isaac Asimov, Words of Science, page 227",
          "text": "The moral to this story is that the good research scientist pays strict attention to any peculiar event and does not shrug off a mystery as just \"one of those things.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A strange or surprising event for which an explanation is unavailable or not worth pursuing."
      ],
      "id": "en-one_of_those_things-en-noun-QWy4nRYh",
      "links": [
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        ],
        [
          "explanation",
          "explanation"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "often preceded by just",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often preceded by just) A strange or surprising event for which an explanation is unavailable or not worth pursuing."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "no-plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-one of those things.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c8/En-au-one_of_those_things.ogg/En-au-one_of_those_things.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/En-au-one_of_those_things.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "one of those things"
}
{
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English nouns with unattested plurals",
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "!",
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      "expansion": "one of those things (plural not attested)",
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    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "It was just one of those things: I spent an hour in traffic and then found that the shop was closed."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An unfortunate, but unavoidable, event."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "just",
          "just#English"
        ],
        [
          "unfortunate",
          "unfortunate"
        ],
        [
          "unavoidable",
          "unavoidable"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "often preceded by just",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often preceded by just) An unfortunate, but unavoidable, event."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "no-plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1959, Isaac Asimov, Words of Science, page 227",
          "text": "The moral to this story is that the good research scientist pays strict attention to any peculiar event and does not shrug off a mystery as just \"one of those things.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A strange or surprising event for which an explanation is unavailable or not worth pursuing."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "just",
          "just#English"
        ],
        [
          "strange",
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        [
          "explanation",
          "explanation"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "often preceded by just",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often preceded by just) A strange or surprising event for which an explanation is unavailable or not worth pursuing."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "no-plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-one of those things.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c8/En-au-one_of_those_things.ogg/En-au-one_of_those_things.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/En-au-one_of_those_things.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "bùkěbìmiǎn de shì",
      "sense": "unfortunate but unavoidable event",
      "word": "不可避免的事"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "unfortunate but unavoidable event",
      "word": "huonoa tuuria"
    }
  ],
  "word": "one of those things"
}

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.