"public enemy number one" meaning in English

See public enemy number one in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-public enemy number one.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-|head=public enemy number one}} public enemy number one (uncountable)
  1. (US, law enforcement, dated) A person who ranks highest on the federal government's prioritized list of wanted criminal fugitives. Tags: US, dated, uncountable Categories (topical): Law enforcement, People Synonyms: Public Enemy No. 1
    Sense id: en-public_enemy_number_one-en-noun-9FoJ9WYN Disambiguation of People: 99 1 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 73 27 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 80 20 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 82 18 Topics: government, law-enforcement
  2. (by extension) A person, organization, or other object considered to be particularly menacing, harmful, or loathsome. Tags: broadly, uncountable
    Sense id: en-public_enemy_number_one-en-noun-8SQm4yBy

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for public enemy number one meaning in English (4.6kB)

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          "ref": "1934 July 22, “Dillinger Slain in Chicago”, in New York Times, retrieved 2016-10-26, page 1",
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          "ref": "1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 119",
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          "ref": "1983 January 27, William Safire, “Essay: The Midterm Crisis”, in New York Times, retrieved 2016-10-26",
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          "ref": "2014 January 27, Deborah Kotz, “Are no-calorie sweeteners safe?”, in Boston Globe, retrieved 2016-10-26",
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          "ref": "2023 March 28, Tiffany Hsu, quoting Carolos Moreno, “He Wanted to Unclog Cities. Now He’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1.’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "“I wasn’t a researcher anymore, I was Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler,” Mr. Moreno said. “I have become, in one week, Public Enemy No. 1.”",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 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.