"the lights are on but nobody's home" meaning in English

See the lights are on but nobody's home in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} the lights are on but nobody's home
  1. (colloquial, humorous) Somebody is failing to respond, react or comprehend. Tags: colloquial, humorous Synonyms: the lights are on but no one's home
    Sense id: en-the_lights_are_on_but_nobody's_home-en-phrase-OINMa7yq Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for the lights are on but nobody's home meaning in English (0.8kB)

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  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
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        "2": "phrase"
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      "expansion": "the lights are on but nobody's home",
      "name": "head"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Somebody is failing to respond, react or comprehend."
      ],
      "id": "en-the_lights_are_on_but_nobody's_home-en-phrase-OINMa7yq",
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
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        [
          "respond",
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        ],
        [
          "react",
          "react"
        ],
        [
          "comprehend",
          "comprehend"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial, humorous) Somebody is failing to respond, react or comprehend."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "the lights are on but no one's home"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "humorous"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "the lights are on but nobody's home"
}

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "the lights are on but nobody's home",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Somebody is failing to respond, react or comprehend."
      ],
      "links": [
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        ],
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        ],
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial, humorous) Somebody is failing to respond, react or comprehend."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "humorous"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "the lights are on but no one's home"
    }
  ],
  "word": "the lights are on but nobody's home"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 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.