"put a bug in someone's ear" meaning in English

See put a bug in someone's ear in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: puts a bug in someone's ear [present, singular, third-person], putting a bug in someone's ear [participle, present], put a bug in someone's ear [participle, past], put a bug in someone's ear [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|put<,,put> a bug in someone's ear}} put a bug in someone's ear (third-person singular simple present puts a bug in someone's ear, present participle putting a bug in someone's ear, simple past and past participle put a bug in someone's ear)
  1. (idiomatic, informal) To make a small suggestion or give a hint that causes the listener to act. Tags: idiomatic, informal
    Sense id: en-put_a_bug_in_someone's_ear-en-verb-hLIomMPX Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for put a bug in someone's ear meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "puts a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "putting a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "put a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "put a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "put<,,put> a bug in someone's ear"
      },
      "expansion": "put a bug in someone's ear (third-person singular simple present puts a bug in someone's ear, present participle putting a bug in someone's ear, simple past and past participle put a bug in someone's ear)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2005, Gärard Genette, Essays in Aesthetics, page 13",
          "text": "All in all, the preparation of Seuils had put a nasty bug in my ear that was to bear all its fruit only ten years later—if bugs can bear fruit—and not without intermediate phases.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, John Franceschina, Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire, page 33",
          "text": "Ginger Rogers had definitely put a bug in Pan's ear about the movies for, after he was fired from Top Speed, Hermes decided to try his luck earning a living on the West Coast.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Laura Childs, Scorched Eggs",
          "text": "You've been putting a nasty bug in Sheriff Doogie's ear, haven't you? Or maybe he put a bug in your ear. I understand the two of you are thick as thieves.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Charles Lachman, Footsteps in the Snow, page 246",
          "text": "He was so insistent on this point that a friend she mentioned it to put a bug in her ear. Why not head home without calling, just to see what was really going on.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a small suggestion or give a hint that causes the listener to act."
      ],
      "id": "en-put_a_bug_in_someone's_ear-en-verb-hLIomMPX",
      "links": [
        [
          "make",
          "make"
        ],
        [
          "small",
          "small"
        ],
        [
          "suggestion",
          "suggestion"
        ],
        [
          "give",
          "give"
        ],
        [
          "hint",
          "hint"
        ],
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "listener",
          "listener"
        ],
        [
          "act",
          "act"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, informal) To make a small suggestion or give a hint that causes the listener to act."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "put a bug in someone's ear"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "puts a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "putting a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "put a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "put a bug in someone's ear",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "put<,,put> a bug in someone's ear"
      },
      "expansion": "put a bug in someone's ear (third-person singular simple present puts a bug in someone's ear, present participle putting a bug in someone's ear, simple past and past participle put a bug in someone's ear)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2005, Gärard Genette, Essays in Aesthetics, page 13",
          "text": "All in all, the preparation of Seuils had put a nasty bug in my ear that was to bear all its fruit only ten years later—if bugs can bear fruit—and not without intermediate phases.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, John Franceschina, Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire, page 33",
          "text": "Ginger Rogers had definitely put a bug in Pan's ear about the movies for, after he was fired from Top Speed, Hermes decided to try his luck earning a living on the West Coast.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Laura Childs, Scorched Eggs",
          "text": "You've been putting a nasty bug in Sheriff Doogie's ear, haven't you? Or maybe he put a bug in your ear. I understand the two of you are thick as thieves.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Charles Lachman, Footsteps in the Snow, page 246",
          "text": "He was so insistent on this point that a friend she mentioned it to put a bug in her ear. Why not head home without calling, just to see what was really going on.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a small suggestion or give a hint that causes the listener to act."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "make",
          "make"
        ],
        [
          "small",
          "small"
        ],
        [
          "suggestion",
          "suggestion"
        ],
        [
          "give",
          "give"
        ],
        [
          "hint",
          "hint"
        ],
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "listener",
          "listener"
        ],
        [
          "act",
          "act"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, informal) To make a small suggestion or give a hint that causes the listener to act."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "put a bug in someone's ear"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 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.