"to speak of" meaning in English

See to speak of in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Audio: En-au-to speak of.ogg
Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} to speak of
  1. (idiomatic, usually negative) Sufficient; important or significant enough to be worth mentioning. Tags: idiomatic, negative, usually Related terms: speaking of, speak of Translations (Translations): vermeldenswaardig (Dutch), noemenswaardig (Dutch), digne d’être mentionné (French), digne de ce nom (French), but see za bardzo (Polish)
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          "text": "not enough to speak of",
          "type": "example"
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        {
          "text": "no [X] to speak of",
          "type": "example"
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        {
          "text": "Q: How many people heeded the advice to bring an umbrella? A: Not enough to speak of.",
          "type": "example"
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        {
          "text": "There was no air conditioning to speak of. [ = There was some, but it was wholly inadequate.]",
          "type": "example"
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          "ref": "1792, Jean François Marmontel, C. Dennis, Robert Lloyd, Moral Tales By M. Marmontel Translated From the French by C. Dennis and R. Lloyd, page 130:",
          "text": "While he spoke thus, the good man leaped with joy; and as he was a widower, they advised him to put himself agian to the ranks. 'No raillery,' said he, 'if I were always as young, I might yet do something to speak of.",
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          "ref": "1980, Charlotte Vale Allen, Promises, page 79:",
          "text": "There were no tall buildings to speak of, certainly nothing in the way of skyscrapers, no brownstones […]",
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        },
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          "ref": "2013, Stephen Dixon, 30 Pieces of a Novel, →ISBN:",
          "text": "But some have no parents, or none to speak of, and are living with a grandmother or uncle or married sister or sister who's not married but has three tots of her own to look after, or this unruly student's helping her to take care of them with babysitting or a paying after-school job.",
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          "text": "Completely disorientated by the explosion of dust, it was only now she realised she was running through Tina’s flat. It was even grottier than Zoe’s. There was no furniture or carpet to speak of.",
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        "Sufficient; important or significant enough to be worth mentioning."
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        "(idiomatic, usually negative) Sufficient; important or significant enough to be worth mentioning."
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        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "vermeldenswaardig"
        },
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          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "noemenswaardig"
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          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "note": "mainittava (often in the partitive singular)",
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          "lang": "French",
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          "word": "digne d’être mentionné"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
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          "word": "digne de ce nom"
        },
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          "lang": "Polish",
          "note": "no equivalent term in Polish",
          "sense": "Translations"
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          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
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          "word": "but see za bardzo"
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        "(idiomatic, usually negative) Sufficient; important or significant enough to be worth mentioning."
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      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "vermeldenswaardig"
    },
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      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "noemenswaardig"
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      "note": "mainittava (often in the partitive singular)",
      "sense": "Translations"
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      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "digne d’être mentionné"
    },
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      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "digne de ce nom"
    },
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      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
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      "word": "but see za bardzo"
    }
  ],
  "word": "to speak of"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). 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.