"things that go bump in the night" meaning in English

See things that go bump in the night in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-things that go bump in the night.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|p|head=things that go bump in the night}} things that go bump in the night pl (plural only)
  1. (informal, humorous) Frightening imagined creatures; ghosts or other supernatural beings. Tags: humorous, informal, plural, plural-only
    Sense id: en-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night-en-noun-cKUmJt~M Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum

Download JSON data for things that go bump in the night meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p",
        "head": "things that go bump in the night"
      },
      "expansion": "things that go bump in the night pl (plural only)",
      "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": "English pluralia tantum",
          "parents": [
            "Pluralia tantum",
            "Nouns",
            "Lemmas"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1911, Harriott Ely Fansler, Types of prose narratives: A text-book for the story writer, page 43",
          "text": "From Ghaisties, Ghoulies, and Long-Leggity Beasties, and Things That Go Bump in the Night - Good Lord Deliver us.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1940, \"Life on the Newsfronts of the World,\" Life Magazine, 7 Oct., p. 32",
          "text": "Hellish new noises from new and secret British anti-aircraft devices vibrated last week through the din of London bombings. . . . [T]hey must have reminded Londoners of the old litany:\nFrom ghoulies and ghosties,\nLong leggety beasties\nAnd things that go bump in the night\nGood Lord, deliver us."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1961 October 27, May Mackintosh, “If I Were a Witch”, in The Glasgow Herald, page 7",
          "text": "But most of all I recall the haunting magic of the lanterns and the whispered tales of ghosties, goblins, and things that go bump in the night with which we tried to frighten each other.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Frightening imagined creatures; ghosts or other supernatural beings."
      ],
      "id": "en-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night-en-noun-cKUmJt~M",
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "Frightening",
          "frightening#English"
        ],
        [
          "imagine",
          "imagine"
        ],
        [
          "creature",
          "creature"
        ],
        [
          "ghost",
          "ghost"
        ],
        [
          "supernatural",
          "supernatural"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, humorous) Frightening imagined creatures; ghosts or other supernatural beings."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous",
        "informal",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-things that go bump in the night.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f0/En-au-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night.ogg/En-au-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/En-au-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "things that go bump in the night"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p",
        "head": "things that go bump in the night"
      },
      "expansion": "things that go bump in the night pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English humorous terms",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English pluralia tantum",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1911, Harriott Ely Fansler, Types of prose narratives: A text-book for the story writer, page 43",
          "text": "From Ghaisties, Ghoulies, and Long-Leggity Beasties, and Things That Go Bump in the Night - Good Lord Deliver us.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1940, \"Life on the Newsfronts of the World,\" Life Magazine, 7 Oct., p. 32",
          "text": "Hellish new noises from new and secret British anti-aircraft devices vibrated last week through the din of London bombings. . . . [T]hey must have reminded Londoners of the old litany:\nFrom ghoulies and ghosties,\nLong leggety beasties\nAnd things that go bump in the night\nGood Lord, deliver us."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1961 October 27, May Mackintosh, “If I Were a Witch”, in The Glasgow Herald, page 7",
          "text": "But most of all I recall the haunting magic of the lanterns and the whispered tales of ghosties, goblins, and things that go bump in the night with which we tried to frighten each other.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Frightening imagined creatures; ghosts or other supernatural beings."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "humorous",
          "humorous"
        ],
        [
          "Frightening",
          "frightening#English"
        ],
        [
          "imagine",
          "imagine"
        ],
        [
          "creature",
          "creature"
        ],
        [
          "ghost",
          "ghost"
        ],
        [
          "supernatural",
          "supernatural"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, humorous) Frightening imagined creatures; ghosts or other supernatural beings."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous",
        "informal",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-things that go bump in the night.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f0/En-au-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night.ogg/En-au-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/En-au-things_that_go_bump_in_the_night.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "things that go bump in the night"
}

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.