See watch paint dry in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "watches paint dry",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "watching paint dry",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "watched paint dry",
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"past"
]
},
{
"form": "watched paint dry",
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]
}
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"examples": [
{
"text": "I expected his new play to be as good as the last, but it was like watching paint dry.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Sarah Mlynowski, Fishbowl, Harlequin, →ISBN:",
"text": "I click on it. And wait. And wait. And wait. Why does it take so long? It's so slow. This is worse than watching paint dry. Not that I've actually ever watched paint dry. Or even painted.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015, Kate McGovern, Rules for 50/50 Chances, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 224:",
"text": "“I am starving, that is true. But I'd never get bored. I could watch paint dry with you and I wouldn't get bored.” “You could watch paint dry with me? That sounds delightful,” I say.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To watch something that has virtually no movement, hence, something very boring."
],
"id": "en-watch_paint_dry-en-verb-kNr7pmYh",
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"raw_glosses": [
"(humorous) To watch something that has virtually no movement, hence, something very boring."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "watch grass grow"
}
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{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "tuijottaa seinää"
},
{
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"lang": "Polish",
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"word": "nudzić się"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "mirar las musarañas"
}
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"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "2012, Sarah Mlynowski, Fishbowl, Harlequin, →ISBN:",
"text": "I click on it. And wait. And wait. And wait. Why does it take so long? It's so slow. This is worse than watching paint dry. Not that I've actually ever watched paint dry. Or even painted.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2015, Kate McGovern, Rules for 50/50 Chances, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 224:",
"text": "“I am starving, that is true. But I'd never get bored. I could watch paint dry with you and I wouldn't get bored.” “You could watch paint dry with me? That sounds delightful,” I say.",
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"(humorous) To watch something that has virtually no movement, hence, something very boring."
],
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"word": "watch grass grow"
}
],
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}
],
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"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "tuijottaa seinää"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"imperfective"
],
"word": "nudzić się"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "Translations",
"word": "mirar las musarañas"
}
],
"word": "watch paint dry"
}
Download raw JSONL data for watch paint dry meaning in English (2.9kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (ee63ee9 and 4230888). 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.