"twist of the knife" meaning in English

See twist of the knife in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: twists of the knife [plural]
Etymology: See twist the knife. Etymology templates: {{m|en|twist the knife}} twist the knife Head templates: {{en-noun|twists of the knife}} twist of the knife (plural twists of the knife)
  1. (informal, figuratively) An action that worsens a difficult situation or increases a person's distress, irritation, or anger. Tags: figuratively, informal
    Sense id: en-twist_of_the_knife-en-noun--r8O8Ob1 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for twist of the knife meaning in English (1.6kB)

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  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "twist the knife"
      },
      "expansion": "twist the knife",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "See twist the knife.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "twists of the knife",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "twists of the knife"
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      "expansion": "twist of the knife (plural twists of the knife)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2016 February 7, Michael Barbaro, “Once Impervious, Marco Rubio Is Diminished by a Caustic Chris Christie”, in The New York Times",
          "text": "But Mr. Christie had instructed the audience to listen for what he dismissively called the “memorized 25-second speech,” adding, with a twist of the knife, that it was “exactly what his advisers gave him.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An action that worsens a difficult situation or increases a person's distress, irritation, or anger."
      ],
      "id": "en-twist_of_the_knife-en-noun--r8O8Ob1",
      "links": [
        [
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        ],
        [
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        ],
        [
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        ],
        [
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          "increase"
        ],
        [
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        [
          "irritation",
          "irritation"
        ],
        [
          "anger",
          "anger"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, figuratively) An action that worsens a difficult situation or increases a person's distress, irritation, or anger."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "twist of the knife"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "twist the knife"
      },
      "expansion": "twist the knife",
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  ],
  "etymology_text": "See twist the knife.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "twists of the knife",
      "tags": [
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      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {
        "1": "twists of the knife"
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      "expansion": "twist of the knife (plural twists of the knife)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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        "English lemmas",
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      ],
      "examples": [
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          "ref": "2016 February 7, Michael Barbaro, “Once Impervious, Marco Rubio Is Diminished by a Caustic Chris Christie”, in The New York Times",
          "text": "But Mr. Christie had instructed the audience to listen for what he dismissively called the “memorized 25-second speech,” adding, with a twist of the knife, that it was “exactly what his advisers gave him.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An action that worsens a difficult situation or increases a person's distress, irritation, or anger."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "action",
          "action"
        ],
        [
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        [
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        [
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        ],
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          "anger"
        ]
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, figuratively) An action that worsens a difficult situation or increases a person's distress, irritation, or anger."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "twist of the knife"
}

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.