"soft underbelly" meaning in English

{
  "etymology_text": "Disputed",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "soft underbellies",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "soft underbelly (plural soft underbellies)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "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": "2009 March 30, Mustafa Qadri, “Nato's soft underbelly”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "But supply convoys are the soft underbelly of a powerful, modern military force that the Taliban is incapable of matching in conventional combat.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 May 12, Suzanne Goldenberg, “Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Scientists have known for years that the Thwaites glacier is the soft underbelly of the Antarctic ice sheet, and first found that it was unstable decades ago.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Christian Promitzer, Siegfried Gruber, Harald Heppner, editors, Southeast European Studies in a Globalizing World, LIT Verlag Münster, page 119",
          "text": "The current, predominantly right-wing perception is of the Balkans as a contagious disease, an infectious sore in the soft underbelly of Europe, best left to fester in isolation.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A weak spot; a soft spot."
      ],
      "id": "en-soft_underbelly-en-noun-fIWNpHYV",
      "links": [
        [
          "weak spot",
          "weak spot"
        ],
        [
          "soft spot",
          "soft spot"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A weak spot; a soft spot."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "weak spot",
          "word": "軟肋"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "ruǎnlèi",
          "sense": "weak spot",
          "tags": [
            "figuratively",
            "neologism"
          ],
          "word": "软肋"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "weak spot",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "ventre mou"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-soft underbelly.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5b/En-au-soft_underbelly.ogg/En-au-soft_underbelly.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/En-au-soft_underbelly.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "soft underbelly"
}

{
  "etymology_text": "Disputed",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "soft underbellies",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "soft underbelly (plural soft underbellies)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2009 March 30, Mustafa Qadri, “Nato's soft underbelly”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "But supply convoys are the soft underbelly of a powerful, modern military force that the Taliban is incapable of matching in conventional combat.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 May 12, Suzanne Goldenberg, “Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "Scientists have known for years that the Thwaites glacier is the soft underbelly of the Antarctic ice sheet, and first found that it was unstable decades ago.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Christian Promitzer, Siegfried Gruber, Harald Heppner, editors, Southeast European Studies in a Globalizing World, LIT Verlag Münster, page 119",
          "text": "The current, predominantly right-wing perception is of the Balkans as a contagious disease, an infectious sore in the soft underbelly of Europe, best left to fester in isolation.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A weak spot; a soft spot."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "weak spot",
          "weak spot"
        ],
        [
          "soft spot",
          "soft spot"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A weak spot; a soft spot."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-soft underbelly.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5b/En-au-soft_underbelly.ogg/En-au-soft_underbelly.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/En-au-soft_underbelly.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "weak spot",
      "word": "軟肋"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "ruǎnlèi",
      "sense": "weak spot",
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "neologism"
      ],
      "word": "软肋"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "weak spot",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "ventre mou"
    }
  ],
  "word": "soft underbelly"
}