See show who's boss in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for show who's boss meaning in English (4.3kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "shows who's boss",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "showing who's boss",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "showed who's boss",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "shown who's boss",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*",
"2": "",
"3": "",
"4": "shown who's boss"
},
"expansion": "show who's boss (third-person singular simple present shows who's boss, present participle showing who's boss, simple past showed who's boss, past participle shown who's boss)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "46 54",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1975, Dorothy Corkille Briggs, Your Child's Self-esteem: The Key to Life, page 234",
"text": "When children are young, spanking is a familiar device to show who's boss.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1989 June 24, Alan Cowell, “Coping With Curfew in Gaza”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "Israeli soldiers . . . impose the curfews as collective punishment or as a means to head off violent protest, or simply to show who's boss.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2015 February 12, Anna Lysyanskaya, “Want better data privacy? Demand it”, in Providence Journal, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "So tomorrow a patriotic Russian hacker might just start breaking into private email servers of American companies and releasing their contents, just to show who’s boss.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To demonstrate oneself to be dominant; to show that one has the upper hand."
],
"id": "en-show_who's_boss-en-verb-TPJx8zWL",
"links": [
[
"demonstrate",
"demonstrate"
],
[
"dominant",
"dominant"
],
[
"upper hand",
"upper hand"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, idiomatic) To demonstrate oneself to be dominant; to show that one has the upper hand."
],
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "61 39",
"word": "teach someone a lesson"
},
{
"_dis1": "61 39",
"word": "like one owns the place"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "61 39",
"word": "show who's the boss"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"intransitive"
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "72 28",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to show dominance",
"word": "näyttää, kuka on pomo"
}
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "46 54",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1916, B. M. Bower, chapter 21, in The Heritage of the Sioux",
"text": "\"Bimeby I show yoh who's boss. I make yoh cry for Ramon be good to yoh!\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1995 March 14, Russell Baker, “Fat Is Easier”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "A typewriter once put me in such evil temper that I threw it out a second-floor window. . . . Replacing it cost $100 or so—a small price to pay for the pleasure of showing a machine who's boss.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2009 July 25, Lawrence O'Donnell Jr, “The Stupidity of the Gates Arrest”, in Time, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "[H]e decided to show Gates who's boss the only way he knew how—by whipping out his handcuffs and abusing his power to arrest.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To demonstrate that one is dominant over or superior to someone; to establish that one has control of some device or intractable object."
],
"id": "en-show_who's_boss-en-verb-6d7AKnsn",
"links": [
[
"superior",
"superior"
],
[
"control",
"control"
],
[
"device",
"device"
],
[
"intractable",
"intractable"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(transitive, idiomatic) To demonstrate that one is dominant over or superior to someone; to establish that one has control of some device or intractable object."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"transitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-show who's boss.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5a/En-au-show_who%27s_boss.ogg/En-au-show_who%27s_boss.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/En-au-show_who%27s_boss.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "47 53",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to demonstrate dominance",
"word": "näyttää, kuka on pomo"
}
],
"word": "show who's boss"
}
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English verbs"
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "shows who's boss",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "showing who's boss",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "showed who's boss",
"tags": [
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "shown who's boss",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*",
"2": "",
"3": "",
"4": "shown who's boss"
},
"expansion": "show who's boss (third-person singular simple present shows who's boss, present participle showing who's boss, simple past showed who's boss, past participle shown who's boss)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "teach someone a lesson"
},
{
"word": "like one owns the place"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1975, Dorothy Corkille Briggs, Your Child's Self-esteem: The Key to Life, page 234",
"text": "When children are young, spanking is a familiar device to show who's boss.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1989 June 24, Alan Cowell, “Coping With Curfew in Gaza”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "Israeli soldiers . . . impose the curfews as collective punishment or as a means to head off violent protest, or simply to show who's boss.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2015 February 12, Anna Lysyanskaya, “Want better data privacy? Demand it”, in Providence Journal, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "So tomorrow a patriotic Russian hacker might just start breaking into private email servers of American companies and releasing their contents, just to show who’s boss.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To demonstrate oneself to be dominant; to show that one has the upper hand."
],
"links": [
[
"demonstrate",
"demonstrate"
],
[
"dominant",
"dominant"
],
[
"upper hand",
"upper hand"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(intransitive, idiomatic) To demonstrate oneself to be dominant; to show that one has the upper hand."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"intransitive"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English transitive verbs",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1916, B. M. Bower, chapter 21, in The Heritage of the Sioux",
"text": "\"Bimeby I show yoh who's boss. I make yoh cry for Ramon be good to yoh!\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1995 March 14, Russell Baker, “Fat Is Easier”, in New York Times, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "A typewriter once put me in such evil temper that I threw it out a second-floor window. . . . Replacing it cost $100 or so—a small price to pay for the pleasure of showing a machine who's boss.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2009 July 25, Lawrence O'Donnell Jr, “The Stupidity of the Gates Arrest”, in Time, retrieved 2015-06-11",
"text": "[H]e decided to show Gates who's boss the only way he knew how—by whipping out his handcuffs and abusing his power to arrest.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To demonstrate that one is dominant over or superior to someone; to establish that one has control of some device or intractable object."
],
"links": [
[
"superior",
"superior"
],
[
"control",
"control"
],
[
"device",
"device"
],
[
"intractable",
"intractable"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(transitive, idiomatic) To demonstrate that one is dominant over or superior to someone; to establish that one has control of some device or intractable object."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"transitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-show who's boss.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5a/En-au-show_who%27s_boss.ogg/En-au-show_who%27s_boss.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/En-au-show_who%27s_boss.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "show who's the boss"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to show dominance",
"word": "näyttää, kuka on pomo"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to demonstrate dominance",
"word": "näyttää, kuka on pomo"
}
],
"word": "show who's boss"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c 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.