"up to one's neck in alligators" meaning in English

See up to one's neck in alligators in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Etymology: An expressive image, derived from the proverb "when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp". Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} up to one's neck in alligators
  1. Extremely busy; having many pressing obligations, distractions, etc consuming one's time.
    Sense id: en-up_to_one's_neck_in_alligators-en-phrase-330xqy6p Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for up to one's neck in alligators meaning in English (0.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "An expressive image, derived from the proverb \"when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp\".",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "up to one's neck in alligators",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "For quotations using this term, see Citations:up to one's neck in alligators."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Extremely busy; having many pressing obligations, distractions, etc consuming one's time."
      ],
      "id": "en-up_to_one's_neck_in_alligators-en-phrase-330xqy6p",
      "links": [
        [
          "busy",
          "busy"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "up to one's neck in alligators"
}

{
  "etymology_text": "An expressive image, derived from the proverb \"when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp\".",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "up to one's neck in alligators",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "For quotations using this term, see Citations:up to one's neck in alligators."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Extremely busy; having many pressing obligations, distractions, etc consuming one's time."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "busy",
          "busy"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "up to one's neck in alligators"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). 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.