"tow the line" meaning in English

See tow the line in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: tows the line [present, singular, third-person], towing the line [participle, present], towed the line [participle, past], towed the line [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} tow the line (third-person singular simple present tows the line, present participle towing the line, simple past and past participle towed the line)
  1. (nonstandard) Eggcorn of toe the line. Tags: nonstandard
    Sense id: en-tow_the_line-en-verb-EzxkjLi1 Categories (other): English eggcorns, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for tow the line meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "tows the line",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "towing the line",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "towed the line",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "towed the line",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "tow the line (third-person singular simple present tows the line, present participle towing the line, simple past and past participle towed the line)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English eggcorns",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "[1946 April, George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, in Cyril Connolly, editor, Horizon, volume 13, number 76, London: Horizon, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 255",
          "text": "Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line.]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 February 6, Brad Reed, “'Inexcusable betrayal': Liz Cheney buries her party for following 'Trump's orders'”, in MSN, archived from the original on 2024-02-06, Politics",
          "text": "This isn't the first time this week where Cheney has slammed Republicans for towing the line for Trump.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Eggcorn of toe the line."
      ],
      "id": "en-tow_the_line-en-verb-EzxkjLi1",
      "links": [
        [
          "Eggcorn",
          "eggcorn"
        ],
        [
          "toe the line",
          "toe the line#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(nonstandard) Eggcorn of toe the line."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "nonstandard"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "tow the line"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "tows the line",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "towing the line",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "towed the line",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "towed the line",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "tow the line (third-person singular simple present tows the line, present participle towing the line, simple past and past participle towed the line)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English eggcorns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nonstandard terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "[1946 April, George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, in Cyril Connolly, editor, Horizon, volume 13, number 76, London: Horizon, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 255",
          "text": "Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line.]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2024 February 6, Brad Reed, “'Inexcusable betrayal': Liz Cheney buries her party for following 'Trump's orders'”, in MSN, archived from the original on 2024-02-06, Politics",
          "text": "This isn't the first time this week where Cheney has slammed Republicans for towing the line for Trump.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Eggcorn of toe the line."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Eggcorn",
          "eggcorn"
        ],
        [
          "toe the line",
          "toe the line#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(nonstandard) Eggcorn of toe the line."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "nonstandard"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "tow the line"
}

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.