See sit on the fence in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for sit on the fence meaning in English (3.6kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "sits on the fence",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "sitting on the fence",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "sat on the fence",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "sat on the fence",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "sit<,,sat> on the fence"
},
"expansion": "sit on the fence (third-person singular simple present sits on the fence, present participle sitting on the fence, simple past and past participle sat on the fence)",
"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": "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with redundant transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1897, John James Procter, The philosopher in the clearing, page 240",
"text": "and Bloomah will sometimes sit on the fence, concerning whose discretion, the same thing may be said...",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1956, Theology, Great Britain: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, page 22",
"text": "The curate refused to label himself; so the squire growled, \"Oh, you sit on the fence, do you?\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1972, Joseph Robinson, The first book of Kings, page 207",
"text": "Elijah stepped forward and said to the people, \"How long will you sit on the fence? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2019 April 20, Tom Watson, “Labour can’t defeat Nigel Farage by sitting on the fence”, in The Observer, →ISSN",
"text": "We won’t win if we sit on the fence about the most crucial issue that has faced our country for a generation.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To remain neutral on a certain topic, to not have a stance or opinion."
],
"id": "en-sit_on_the_fence-en-verb-oM-p7jzK",
"links": [
[
"neutral",
"neutral"
],
[
"stance",
"stance"
],
[
"opinion",
"opinion"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, intransitive) To remain neutral on a certain topic, to not have a stance or opinion."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "fence-sit"
},
{
"word": "fence sitter"
},
{
"word": "fence-sitting"
},
{
"word": "on the fence"
},
{
"word": "the jury is still out"
}
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"intransitive"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "騎牆"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "qíqiáng",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "骑墙"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "jäädä odottavalle kannalle"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "olla odottavalla kannalla"
},
{
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "hiyoru",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "日和る"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "siedzieć okrakiem na barykadzie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "usiąść okrakiem na barykadzie"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "em cima do muro"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-sit on the fence.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/86/En-au-sit_on_the_fence.ogg/En-au-sit_on_the_fence.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/En-au-sit_on_the_fence.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"word": "sit on the fence"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "sits on the fence",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "sitting on the fence",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "sat on the fence",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "sat on the fence",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "sit<,,sat> on the fence"
},
"expansion": "sit on the fence (third-person singular simple present sits on the fence, present participle sitting on the fence, simple past and past participle sat on the fence)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"related": [
{
"word": "fence-sit"
},
{
"word": "fence sitter"
},
{
"word": "fence-sitting"
},
{
"word": "on the fence"
},
{
"word": "the jury is still out"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English idioms",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English terms with audio links",
"English terms with quotations",
"English verbs",
"Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"Quotation templates to be cleaned",
"Translation table header lacks gloss"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1897, John James Procter, The philosopher in the clearing, page 240",
"text": "and Bloomah will sometimes sit on the fence, concerning whose discretion, the same thing may be said...",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1956, Theology, Great Britain: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, page 22",
"text": "The curate refused to label himself; so the squire growled, \"Oh, you sit on the fence, do you?\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1972, Joseph Robinson, The first book of Kings, page 207",
"text": "Elijah stepped forward and said to the people, \"How long will you sit on the fence? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2019 April 20, Tom Watson, “Labour can’t defeat Nigel Farage by sitting on the fence”, in The Observer, →ISSN",
"text": "We won’t win if we sit on the fence about the most crucial issue that has faced our country for a generation.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To remain neutral on a certain topic, to not have a stance or opinion."
],
"links": [
[
"neutral",
"neutral"
],
[
"stance",
"stance"
],
[
"opinion",
"opinion"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic, intransitive) To remain neutral on a certain topic, to not have a stance or opinion."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic",
"intransitive"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-sit on the fence.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/86/En-au-sit_on_the_fence.ogg/En-au-sit_on_the_fence.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/En-au-sit_on_the_fence.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "騎牆"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "qíqiáng",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "骑墙"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "jäädä odottavalle kannalle"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "olla odottavalla kannalla"
},
{
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"roman": "hiyoru",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "日和る"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "siedzieć okrakiem na barykadzie"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"perfective"
],
"word": "usiąść okrakiem na barykadzie"
},
{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "em cima do muro"
}
],
"word": "sit on the fence"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 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.