"pain in the neck" meaning in English

See pain in the neck in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-pain in the neck.ogg Forms: pains in the neck [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|pains in the neck}} pain in the neck (plural pains in the neck)
  1. (idiomatic, slang) Someone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient. Tags: idiomatic, slang Synonyms: pain in the ass, pain in the butt, pest, nuisance
    Sense id: en-pain_in_the_neck-en-noun-dz~ONa2y Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "pains in the neck",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "pains in the neck"
      },
      "expansion": "pain in the neck (plural pains in the neck)",
      "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": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2022 November 19, Clarence Page, “Sometimes offensive comedy is just lazy laughs”, in Chicago Tribune:",
          "text": "OK, call me a hypersensitive liberal, if you want. It wouldn’t be the first time. I can be a pain in the neck about racial, ethnic and religious bias sometimes, but I think it’s better to be hypersensitive than insensitive.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient."
      ],
      "id": "en-pain_in_the_neck-en-noun-dz~ONa2y",
      "links": [
        [
          "annoying",
          "annoying"
        ],
        [
          "irritating",
          "irritating"
        ],
        [
          "inconvenient",
          "inconvenient"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, slang) Someone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "pain in the ass"
        },
        {
          "word": "pain in the butt"
        },
        {
          "word": "pest"
        },
        {
          "word": "nuisance"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-pain in the neck.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/19/En-au-pain_in_the_neck.ogg/En-au-pain_in_the_neck.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/En-au-pain_in_the_neck.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "pain in the neck"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "pains in the neck",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "pains in the neck"
      },
      "expansion": "pain in the neck (plural pains in the neck)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2022 November 19, Clarence Page, “Sometimes offensive comedy is just lazy laughs”, in Chicago Tribune:",
          "text": "OK, call me a hypersensitive liberal, if you want. It wouldn’t be the first time. I can be a pain in the neck about racial, ethnic and religious bias sometimes, but I think it’s better to be hypersensitive than insensitive.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "annoying",
          "annoying"
        ],
        [
          "irritating",
          "irritating"
        ],
        [
          "inconvenient",
          "inconvenient"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, slang) Someone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "pain in the ass"
        },
        {
          "word": "pain in the butt"
        },
        {
          "word": "pest"
        },
        {
          "word": "nuisance"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-pain in the neck.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/19/En-au-pain_in_the_neck.ogg/En-au-pain_in_the_neck.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/En-au-pain_in_the_neck.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "pain in the neck"
}

Download raw JSONL data for pain in the neck meaning in English (1.6kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). 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.