See piece of work in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "First use appears c. 1473. The idiomatic second sense came about due to Hamlet’s monologue. See cite from sense 1 below.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "pieces of work",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "pieces of work"
},
"expansion": "piece of work (plural pieces of work)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "0 0",
"word": "workpiece"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:",
"text": "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!\nhow infinite in faculty!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"text": "1996, David Ansen \"The Killer And The Nun (film review),\" Newsweek, 8 Jan.,\n“Dead Man Walking” is a powerful and intelligent piece of work."
}
],
"glosses": [
"A product or manufactured article, especially an item of art or craft."
],
"id": "en-piece_of_work-en-noun--ZlnR6Jb",
"links": [
[
"product",
"product"
],
[
"manufactured",
"manufactured"
],
[
"article",
"article"
],
[
"art",
"art"
],
[
"craft",
"craft"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "40 60",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "41 59",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "16 84",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "16 84",
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "People",
"orig": "en:People",
"parents": [
"Human",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1911, Gabrielle Emilie Jackson, Peggy Stewart at home, page 259:",
"text": "Ugh! She's a piece of work.\n\"A rotten, bad piece, I'd call it,\" answered Wheedles under his breath.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1991 April 29, “Music: The Ballads Of Shirley Horn”, in Newsweek:",
"text": "She built a reputation as a piece of work; if she didn't like a crowd, sometimes she'd walk off stage in midset and call a cab home.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2007 November 25, Elizabeth Keenan, “Australia's New Order”, in Time:",
"text": "Known as Pixie for his fresh looks, and Dr Death for his cold stare of disapproval, Rudd was said to have few friends in Canberra. Former Labor leaders Paul Keating and Mark Latham described him, respectively, as \"a menace\" and \"a terrible piece of work\".",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A person who has a strong and unusual personality, especially one with seriously unpleasant character flaws."
],
"id": "en-piece_of_work-en-noun-E0s4dNLi",
"links": [
[
"derogatory",
"derogatory"
],
[
"strong",
"strong"
],
[
"unusual",
"unusual"
],
[
"personality",
"personality"
],
[
"serious",
"serious"
],
[
"unpleasant",
"unpleasant"
],
[
"character",
"character"
],
[
"flaw",
"flaw"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, often derogatory) A person who has a strong and unusual personality, especially one with seriously unpleasant character flaws."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory",
"idiomatic",
"often"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-piece of work.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/85/En-au-piece_of_work.ogg/En-au-piece_of_work.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/En-au-piece_of_work.ogg"
}
],
"word": "piece of work"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms first attested in Shakespeare",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"en:People"
],
"etymology_text": "First use appears c. 1473. The idiomatic second sense came about due to Hamlet’s monologue. See cite from sense 1 below.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "pieces of work",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "pieces of work"
},
"expansion": "piece of work (plural pieces of work)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "workpiece"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:",
"text": "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!\nhow infinite in faculty!",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"text": "1996, David Ansen \"The Killer And The Nun (film review),\" Newsweek, 8 Jan.,\n“Dead Man Walking” is a powerful and intelligent piece of work."
}
],
"glosses": [
"A product or manufactured article, especially an item of art or craft."
],
"links": [
[
"product",
"product"
],
[
"manufactured",
"manufactured"
],
[
"article",
"article"
],
[
"art",
"art"
],
[
"craft",
"craft"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English derogatory terms",
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1911, Gabrielle Emilie Jackson, Peggy Stewart at home, page 259:",
"text": "Ugh! She's a piece of work.\n\"A rotten, bad piece, I'd call it,\" answered Wheedles under his breath.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1991 April 29, “Music: The Ballads Of Shirley Horn”, in Newsweek:",
"text": "She built a reputation as a piece of work; if she didn't like a crowd, sometimes she'd walk off stage in midset and call a cab home.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2007 November 25, Elizabeth Keenan, “Australia's New Order”, in Time:",
"text": "Known as Pixie for his fresh looks, and Dr Death for his cold stare of disapproval, Rudd was said to have few friends in Canberra. Former Labor leaders Paul Keating and Mark Latham described him, respectively, as \"a menace\" and \"a terrible piece of work\".",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A person who has a strong and unusual personality, especially one with seriously unpleasant character flaws."
],
"links": [
[
"derogatory",
"derogatory"
],
[
"strong",
"strong"
],
[
"unusual",
"unusual"
],
[
"personality",
"personality"
],
[
"serious",
"serious"
],
[
"unpleasant",
"unpleasant"
],
[
"character",
"character"
],
[
"flaw",
"flaw"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, often derogatory) A person who has a strong and unusual personality, especially one with seriously unpleasant character flaws."
],
"tags": [
"derogatory",
"idiomatic",
"often"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-piece of work.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/85/En-au-piece_of_work.ogg/En-au-piece_of_work.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/En-au-piece_of_work.ogg"
}
],
"word": "piece of work"
}
Download raw JSONL data for piece of work meaning in English (3.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (bb46d54 and 0c3c9f6). 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.