"top brass" meaning in English

See top brass in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-top brass.ogg [Australia] Forms: top brasses [plural]
Etymology: Originally military slang, from [the] brass (“high-ranking officers”). Etymology templates: {{m|en|brass|􂀿the􂁀 brass|gloss=high-ranking officers|id=officers}} [the] brass (“high-ranking officers”) Head templates: {{en-noun|-|+}} top brass (usually uncountable, plural top brasses)
  1. (collective, colloquial) A group of people who are the leaders or heads of an organization. Tags: collective, colloquial, uncountable, usually Categories (topical): Collectives Synonyms: governance, governing body, organisation, administration, establishment Translations (group of people who are the leaders): plana mayor [feminine] (Spanish)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for top brass meaning in English (3.2kB)

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  "etymology_templates": [
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      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "brass",
        "3": "􂀿the􂁀 brass",
        "gloss": "high-ranking officers",
        "id": "officers"
      },
      "expansion": "[the] brass (“high-ranking officers”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Originally military slang, from [the] brass (“high-ranking officers”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "top brasses",
      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-",
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      "expansion": "top brass (usually uncountable, plural top brasses)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
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          "parents": [
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        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Collectives",
          "orig": "en:Collectives",
          "parents": [
            "Miscellaneous",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1872, New Zealand Parliament, House of Representatives, “Parliamentary debates”, in 57, volumes 1-6, page 649",
          "text": "The top brass of the army are up to various types of mischief and they do not want the public or even Members of Parliament to know about them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1962 February, “No Talent on the Railways?”, in Modern Railways, page 74",
          "text": "The general who turned the tide at Alamein was not, prior to his arrival in the Middle East, one of the very \"top brass\"; but he was a soldier, not a detergent manufacturer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022-01-22, Vincent Ni, “China hires western TikTokers to polish its image during 2022 Winter Olympics”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "On 3 January, Republican senator Rick Scott urged in a letter to Newsweek’s top brass to “reconsider its relationship with Vipp Jaswal”.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022-11-09, “Kherson: Russia to withdraw troops from key Ukrainian city”, in BBC News",
          "text": "The military's top brass were seen making the decision on Russian state TV, with Gen Surovikin reporting on the situation on the ground in Kherson.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A group of people who are the leaders or heads of an organization."
      ],
      "id": "en-top_brass-en-noun-oDOcDx03",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(collective, colloquial) A group of people who are the leaders or heads of an organization."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "governance"
        },
        {
          "word": "governing body"
        },
        {
          "word": "organisation"
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        {
          "word": "administration"
        },
        {
          "word": "establishment"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "collective",
        "colloquial",
        "uncountable",
        "usually"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "group of people who are the leaders",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "plana mayor"
        }
      ]
    }
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/En-au-top_brass.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "top brass"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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        "2": "brass",
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        "id": "officers"
      },
      "expansion": "[the] brass (“high-ranking officers”)",
      "name": "m"
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  ],
  "etymology_text": "Originally military slang, from [the] brass (“high-ranking officers”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "top brasses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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  "lang_code": "en",
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        {
          "ref": "1872, New Zealand Parliament, House of Representatives, “Parliamentary debates”, in 57, volumes 1-6, page 649",
          "text": "The top brass of the army are up to various types of mischief and they do not want the public or even Members of Parliament to know about them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1962 February, “No Talent on the Railways?”, in Modern Railways, page 74",
          "text": "The general who turned the tide at Alamein was not, prior to his arrival in the Middle East, one of the very \"top brass\"; but he was a soldier, not a detergent manufacturer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022-01-22, Vincent Ni, “China hires western TikTokers to polish its image during 2022 Winter Olympics”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "On 3 January, Republican senator Rick Scott urged in a letter to Newsweek’s top brass to “reconsider its relationship with Vipp Jaswal”.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022-11-09, “Kherson: Russia to withdraw troops from key Ukrainian city”, in BBC News",
          "text": "The military's top brass were seen making the decision on Russian state TV, with Gen Surovikin reporting on the situation on the ground in Kherson.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A group of people who are the leaders or heads of an organization."
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(collective, colloquial) A group of people who are the leaders or heads of an organization."
      ],
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        {
          "word": "governance"
        },
        {
          "word": "governing body"
        },
        {
          "word": "organisation"
        },
        {
          "word": "administration"
        },
        {
          "word": "establishment"
        }
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  "sounds": [
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      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2d/En-au-top_brass.ogg/En-au-top_brass.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/En-au-top_brass.ogg",
      "tags": [
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "group of people who are the leaders",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "plana mayor"
    }
  ],
  "word": "top brass"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-03-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-03-01 using wiktextract (68773ab and 5f6ddbb). 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.