up to no good in English

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{
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
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          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "up-to-no-gooder"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              129,
              142
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1971, The Dramatics, “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get”, in Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get:",
          "text": "Some people are made of plastic / And you know some people are made of wood / Some people have hearts of stone / Some people are up to no good",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Misbehaving, being mischievous."
      ],
      "id": "en-up_to_no_good-en-prep_phrase-piTM1ECb",
      "links": [
        [
          "Misbehaving",
          "misbehave"
        ],
        [
          "mischievous",
          "mischievous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, litotes) Misbehaving, being mischievous."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌʌp tə ˌnoʊ ˈɡʊd/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/-tʊ-/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-up to no good.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/be/En-au-up_to_no_good.ogg/En-au-up_to_no_good.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/En-au-up_to_no_good.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "up to no good"
}

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

{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "up-to-no-gooder"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English litotes",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English negative polarity items",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              129,
              142
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1971, The Dramatics, “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get”, in Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get:",
          "text": "Some people are made of plastic / And you know some people are made of wood / Some people have hearts of stone / Some people are up to no good",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Misbehaving, being mischievous."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Misbehaving",
          "misbehave"
        ],
        [
          "mischievous",
          "mischievous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, litotes) Misbehaving, being mischievous."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌʌp tə ˌnoʊ ˈɡʊd/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/-tʊ-/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-up to no good.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/be/En-au-up_to_no_good.ogg/En-au-up_to_no_good.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/En-au-up_to_no_good.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "up to no good"
}

[Show JSON error data ▼] [Hide JSON error data ▲]

{
  "called_from": "form_descriptions/1831",
  "msg": "unrecognized sense qualifier: idiomatic, litotes",
  "path": [
    "up to no good"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "prepositional phrase",
  "title": "up to no good",
  "trace": ""
}

{
  "called_from": "form_descriptions/1831",
  "msg": "unrecognized sense qualifier: idiomatic, litotes",
  "path": [
    "up to no good"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "prepositional phrase",
  "title": "up to no good",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-06-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-06-01 using wiktextract (03da280 and 7f4db16). 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.

"up to no good" meaning in English

Prepositional phrase