open the floodgates in English

Audio: En-au-open the floodgates.ogg

Forms: opens the floodgates [present, singular, third-person], opening the floodgates [participle, present], opened the floodgates [participle, past], opened the floodgates [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: Literally, to allow floodwater that had been held back to flow freely Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} open the floodgates (third-person singular simple present opens the floodgates, present participle opening the floodgates, simple past and past participle opened the floodgates)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Literally, to allow floodwater that had been held back to flow freely",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "opens the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "opening the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "opened the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "opened the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "open the floodgates (third-person singular simple present opens the floodgates, present participle opening the floodgates, simple past and past participle opened the floodgates)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To allow some action to proceed more swiftly or to a greater extent"
      ],
      "id": "en-open_the_floodgates-en-verb-DvNGKsrk",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To allow some action to proceed more swiftly or to a greater extent"
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "let rip"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-open the floodgates.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b6/En-au-open_the_floodgates.ogg/En-au-open_the_floodgates.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/En-au-open_the_floodgates.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "open the floodgates"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "Literally, to allow floodwater that had been held back to flow freely",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "opens the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "opening the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "opened the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "opened the floodgates",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "open the floodgates (third-person singular simple present opens the floodgates, present participle opening the floodgates, simple past and past participle opened the floodgates)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "let rip"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To allow some action to proceed more swiftly or to a greater extent"
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To allow some action to proceed more swiftly or to a greater extent"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-open the floodgates.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b6/En-au-open_the_floodgates.ogg/En-au-open_the_floodgates.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/En-au-open_the_floodgates.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "open the floodgates"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). 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.

"open the floodgates" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms