"wheel within a wheel" meaning in English

See wheel within a wheel in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-wheel within a wheel.ogg [Australia] Forms: wheels within wheels [plural]
Etymology: From the Bible, Book of Ezekiel, 1:16. Head templates: {{en-noun|wheels within wheels}} wheel within a wheel (plural wheels within wheels)
  1. (idiomatic, often in the plural) A complication of circumstances, motives, etc. Tags: idiomatic, in-plural, often

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for wheel within a wheel meaning in English (2.3kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the Bible, Book of Ezekiel, 1:16.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wheels within wheels",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "wheels within wheels"
      },
      "expansion": "wheel within a wheel (plural wheels within wheels)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1933, P. G. Wodehouse, Heavy Weather",
          "text": "The fact is, there’s something I rather wanted to call to your attention. You don’t know it, but for private and personal reasons I particularly want to hold this Tiny Tots job for a year. There are wheels within wheels. It’s a sort of bet, as a matter of fact. Have you ever met a girl called Gertrude Butterwick?… However, it’s a long story and I won’t bother you with it now. But you can take it from me that there definitely are wheels within wheels and unless I continue in your employment, till somewhere around the middle of next June, my life will be a blank and all my hopes and dreams shattered.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A complication of circumstances, motives, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-wheel_within_a_wheel-en-noun-5nEGzCz5",
      "links": [
        [
          "complication",
          "complication"
        ],
        [
          "circumstance",
          "circumstance"
        ],
        [
          "motive",
          "motive"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often in the plural) A complication of circumstances, motives, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "in-plural",
        "often"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-wheel within a wheel.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d3/En-au-wheel_within_a_wheel.ogg/En-au-wheel_within_a_wheel.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/En-au-wheel_within_a_wheel.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wheel within a wheel"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the Bible, Book of Ezekiel, 1:16.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wheels within wheels",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "wheels within wheels"
      },
      "expansion": "wheel within a wheel (plural wheels within wheels)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms derived from the Bible",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1933, P. G. Wodehouse, Heavy Weather",
          "text": "The fact is, there’s something I rather wanted to call to your attention. You don’t know it, but for private and personal reasons I particularly want to hold this Tiny Tots job for a year. There are wheels within wheels. It’s a sort of bet, as a matter of fact. Have you ever met a girl called Gertrude Butterwick?… However, it’s a long story and I won’t bother you with it now. But you can take it from me that there definitely are wheels within wheels and unless I continue in your employment, till somewhere around the middle of next June, my life will be a blank and all my hopes and dreams shattered.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A complication of circumstances, motives, etc."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "complication",
          "complication"
        ],
        [
          "circumstance",
          "circumstance"
        ],
        [
          "motive",
          "motive"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, often in the plural) A complication of circumstances, motives, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "in-plural",
        "often"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-wheel within a wheel.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d3/En-au-wheel_within_a_wheel.ogg/En-au-wheel_within_a_wheel.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/En-au-wheel_within_a_wheel.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wheel within a wheel"
}

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.