"tell it to Sweeney" meaning in English

See tell it to Sweeney in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Audio: En-au-tell it to Sweeney.ogg [Australia]
Etymology: "Tell it to Sweeney! (The Stuyvesants will understand.)” was an advertisement for the New York (NY) Daily News, first appearing in August 1922. The Daily News positioned itself as the newspaper of the average working man—such as the Irish “Sweeney.” The name “Stuyvesant” was used to represent blue bloods. Thus, if you advertise in the Daily News and reach the Sweeneys of New York City, the Stuyvesants will also get the message. Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} tell it to Sweeney
  1. (idiomatic, dated, colloquial) I do not believe what you said. Tags: colloquial, dated, idiomatic Synonyms: tell it to the judge, tell it to the marines, bullshit

Download JSON data for tell it to Sweeney meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "\"Tell it to Sweeney! (The Stuyvesants will understand.)” was an advertisement for the New York (NY) Daily News, first appearing in August 1922. The Daily News positioned itself as the newspaper of the average working man—such as the Irish “Sweeney.” The name “Stuyvesant” was used to represent blue bloods. Thus, if you advertise in the Daily News and reach the Sweeneys of New York City, the Stuyvesants will also get the message.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "tell it to Sweeney",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "name": "English imperatives",
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "I do not believe what you said."
      ],
      "id": "en-tell_it_to_Sweeney-en-phrase-xwQ2hpJK",
      "links": [
        [
          "believe",
          "believe"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, dated, colloquial) I do not believe what you said."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "tell it to the judge"
        },
        {
          "word": "tell it to the marines"
        },
        {
          "word": "bullshit"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "dated",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-tell it to Sweeney.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/14/En-au-tell_it_to_Sweeney.ogg/En-au-tell_it_to_Sweeney.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/En-au-tell_it_to_Sweeney.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "tell it to Sweeney"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "\"Tell it to Sweeney! (The Stuyvesants will understand.)” was an advertisement for the New York (NY) Daily News, first appearing in August 1922. The Daily News positioned itself as the newspaper of the average working man—such as the Irish “Sweeney.” The name “Stuyvesant” was used to represent blue bloods. Thus, if you advertise in the Daily News and reach the Sweeneys of New York City, the Stuyvesants will also get the message.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "tell it to Sweeney",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English dated terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English imperatives",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "I do not believe what you said."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "believe",
          "believe"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, dated, colloquial) I do not believe what you said."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "dated",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-tell it to Sweeney.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/14/En-au-tell_it_to_Sweeney.ogg/En-au-tell_it_to_Sweeney.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/En-au-tell_it_to_Sweeney.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "tell it to the judge"
    },
    {
      "word": "tell it to the marines"
    },
    {
      "word": "bullshit"
    }
  ],
  "word": "tell it to Sweeney"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-24 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (82c8ff9 and f4967a5). 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.