play first fiddle in English

Audio: En-au-play first fiddle.ogg

[Australia] Forms: plays first fiddle [present, singular, third-person], playing first fiddle [participle, present], played first fiddle [participle, past], played first fiddle [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: From the first violin in an orchestra. Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} play first fiddle (third-person singular simple present plays first fiddle, present participle playing first fiddle, simple past and past participle played first fiddle)

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

{
  "etymology_text": "From the first violin in an orchestra.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plays first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "play first fiddle (third-person singular simple present plays first fiddle, present participle playing first fiddle, simple past and past participle played first fiddle)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To play a leading role."
      ],
      "id": "en-play_first_fiddle-en-verb-J1I1Q4Ko",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, intransitive) To play a leading role."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "play second fiddle"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-play first fiddle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/69/En-au-play_first_fiddle.ogg/En-au-play_first_fiddle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/En-au-play_first_fiddle.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "play first fiddle"
}

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

{
  "etymology_text": "From the first violin in an orchestra.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plays first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played first fiddle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "play first fiddle (third-person singular simple present plays first fiddle, present participle playing first fiddle, simple past and past participle played first fiddle)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "play second fiddle"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To play a leading role."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, intransitive) To play a leading role."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-play first fiddle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/69/En-au-play_first_fiddle.ogg/En-au-play_first_fiddle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/En-au-play_first_fiddle.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "play first fiddle"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (ae36afe and 304864d). 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.

"play first fiddle" meaning in English

Verb