"university of life" meaning in English

See university of life in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-university of life.ogg [Australia] Forms: universities of life [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|universities of life}} university of life (plural universities of life)
  1. (idiomatic, chiefly UK and Ireland) The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education. Tags: Ireland, UK, idiomatic Synonyms: school of hard knocks, university of the streets Related terms: street smarts
    Sense id: en-university_of_life-en-noun-9m~2Om-F Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header, Irish English

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for university of life meaning in English (1.6kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "universities of life",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "universities of life"
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      "expansion": "university of life (plural universities of life)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Irish English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I learned all I need to know from the university of life, not from books.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education."
      ],
      "id": "en-university_of_life-en-noun-9m~2Om-F",
      "links": [
        [
          "real world",
          "real world"
        ],
        [
          "instruction",
          "instruction"
        ],
        [
          "formal",
          "formal"
        ],
        [
          "education",
          "education"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, chiefly UK and Ireland) The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "street smarts"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "school of hard knocks"
        },
        {
          "word": "university of the streets"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Ireland",
        "UK",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-university of life.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c3/En-au-university_of_life.ogg/En-au-university_of_life.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/En-au-university_of_life.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "university of life"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "universities of life",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "universities of life"
      },
      "expansion": "university of life (plural universities of life)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "street smarts"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "British English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Irish English"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I learned all I need to know from the university of life, not from books.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "real world",
          "real world"
        ],
        [
          "instruction",
          "instruction"
        ],
        [
          "formal",
          "formal"
        ],
        [
          "education",
          "education"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, chiefly UK and Ireland) The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Ireland",
        "UK",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-university of life.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c3/En-au-university_of_life.ogg/En-au-university_of_life.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/En-au-university_of_life.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "school of hard knocks"
    },
    {
      "word": "university of the streets"
    }
  ],
  "word": "university of life"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.