turtles all the way down in English

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{
  "etymology_text": "From a supposed explanation of what supports the World Turtle that supports the planet Earth.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p"
      },
      "expansion": "turtles all the way down 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"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A situation of infinite regress; a circular explanation or model."
      ],
      "id": "en-turtles_all_the_way_down-en-noun-y5oi4fnt",
      "links": [
        [
          "infinite",
          "infinite"
        ],
        [
          "regress",
          "regress"
        ],
        [
          "circular",
          "circular"
        ],
        [
          "explanation",
          "explanation"
        ],
        [
          "model",
          "model"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) A situation of infinite regress; a circular explanation or model."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "chicken-or-egg question"
        },
        {
          "word": "Münchhausen trilemma"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "World Turtle"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "turtles all the way down"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_text": "From a supposed explanation of what supports the World Turtle that supports the planet Earth.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p"
      },
      "expansion": "turtles all the way down pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "chicken-or-egg question"
    },
    {
      "word": "Münchhausen trilemma"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English pluralia tantum"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A situation of infinite regress; a circular explanation or model."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "infinite",
          "infinite"
        ],
        [
          "regress",
          "regress"
        ],
        [
          "circular",
          "circular"
        ],
        [
          "explanation",
          "explanation"
        ],
        [
          "model",
          "model"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) A situation of infinite regress; a circular explanation or model."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "World Turtle"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "turtles all the way down"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-22 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (fc4f0c7 and c937495). 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.

"turtles all the way down" meaning in English

Noun