"show ankle" meaning in English

See show ankle in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-show ankle.ogg Forms: shows ankle [present, singular, third-person], showing ankle [participle, present], showed ankle [past], shown ankle [participle, past]
Etymology: Probably an allusion to the flirtatious practice by some young women, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, of raising a long skirt sufficiently to reveal a bare ankle but no more than that. Head templates: {{en-verb|show<,,,shown> ankle}} show ankle (third-person singular simple present shows ankle, present participle showing ankle, simple past showed ankle, past participle shown ankle)
  1. (idiomatic) To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse interest. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: come-on Translations (to provide partial information): nostaa helmaa (Finnish)
{
  "etymology_text": "Probably an allusion to the flirtatious practice by some young women, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, of raising a long skirt sufficiently to reveal a bare ankle but no more than that.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shows ankle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "showing ankle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "showed ankle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shown ankle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "show<,,,shown> ankle"
      },
      "expansion": "show ankle (third-person singular simple present shows ankle, present participle showing ankle, simple past showed ankle, past participle shown ankle)",
      "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"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Entries with translation boxes",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1984 November 28, William Beecher, “Reagan under Pressure to Modify Arms Stance”, in Boston Globe, USA, page 1:",
          "text": "\"He figures that to do so, he'll have to be able to show a little ankle, to give some idea of new positions the United States is prepared to take.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987 November 23, “Suddenly, A Visit by Cuomo Enlivens a Benefit For Casey”, in Philadelphia Inquirer, USA, page B01:",
          "text": "No one expects Cuomo to declare his candidacy tonight But Carduff said \"we expect him to show some ankle\".",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 June 7, Erin Joyce, “SQL Server 2005 Queues Up for Prime Time”, in InternetNews.com, USA, retrieved 2011-09-05:",
          "text": "Microsoft showed some ankle and then some with advanced tools, database and server features in the latest builds of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 October 18, “On the right track”, in The Telegraph, UK, retrieved 2011-09-05:",
          "text": "Now, it seems, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, is ready to show a little ankle by welcoming a proposal from Lord Forsyth's tax commission to abolish stamp duty on shares.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 August 12, “Football & Sport: Manchester United: A Comparison of Sneijder, Cantona, Scholes And Ronaldo”, in Sabotage Times, UK, retrieved 2011-09-05:",
          "text": "Sneijder showed some ankle last week with a veiled ‘come and get me’ plea that was promptly rebuffed by David Gill stating that the deal probably won’t go ahead now.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse interest."
      ],
      "id": "en-show_ankle-en-verb-RSGPWr6D",
      "links": [
        [
          "hint",
          "hint"
        ],
        [
          "reveal",
          "reveal"
        ],
        [
          "partial",
          "partial"
        ],
        [
          "attention",
          "attention"
        ],
        [
          "interest",
          "interest"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse interest."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "come-on"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "to provide partial information",
          "word": "nostaa helmaa"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-show ankle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5b/En-au-show_ankle.ogg/En-au-show_ankle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/En-au-show_ankle.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "word": "show ankle"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Probably an allusion to the flirtatious practice by some young women, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, of raising a long skirt sufficiently to reveal a bare ankle but no more than that.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shows ankle",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "showing ankle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "showed ankle",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "shown ankle",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "show<,,,shown> ankle"
      },
      "expansion": "show ankle (third-person singular simple present shows ankle, present participle showing ankle, simple past showed ankle, past participle shown ankle)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "come-on"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Entries with translation boxes",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Finnish translations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1984 November 28, William Beecher, “Reagan under Pressure to Modify Arms Stance”, in Boston Globe, USA, page 1:",
          "text": "\"He figures that to do so, he'll have to be able to show a little ankle, to give some idea of new positions the United States is prepared to take.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987 November 23, “Suddenly, A Visit by Cuomo Enlivens a Benefit For Casey”, in Philadelphia Inquirer, USA, page B01:",
          "text": "No one expects Cuomo to declare his candidacy tonight But Carduff said \"we expect him to show some ankle\".",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 June 7, Erin Joyce, “SQL Server 2005 Queues Up for Prime Time”, in InternetNews.com, USA, retrieved 2011-09-05:",
          "text": "Microsoft showed some ankle and then some with advanced tools, database and server features in the latest builds of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 October 18, “On the right track”, in The Telegraph, UK, retrieved 2011-09-05:",
          "text": "Now, it seems, the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, is ready to show a little ankle by welcoming a proposal from Lord Forsyth's tax commission to abolish stamp duty on shares.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 August 12, “Football & Sport: Manchester United: A Comparison of Sneijder, Cantona, Scholes And Ronaldo”, in Sabotage Times, UK, retrieved 2011-09-05:",
          "text": "Sneijder showed some ankle last week with a veiled ‘come and get me’ plea that was promptly rebuffed by David Gill stating that the deal probably won’t go ahead now.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse interest."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "hint",
          "hint"
        ],
        [
          "reveal",
          "reveal"
        ],
        [
          "partial",
          "partial"
        ],
        [
          "attention",
          "attention"
        ],
        [
          "interest",
          "interest"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To provide a hint or to reveal partial information in order to gain attention or arouse interest."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-show ankle.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5b/En-au-show_ankle.ogg/En-au-show_ankle.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/En-au-show_ankle.ogg"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "to provide partial information",
      "word": "nostaa helmaa"
    }
  ],
  "word": "show ankle"
}

Download raw JSONL data for show ankle meaning in English (3.4kB)


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.