why in the world in English

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{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "why in the world ...",
      "tags": [
        "canonical"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "interjection",
        "head": "why in the world ...?"
      },
      "expansion": "why in the world ...?",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Why in the world would you spend so much money on a toy?",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "used to add emphasis to “why” in a question."
      ],
      "id": "en-why_in_the_world-en-intj--ErNFn88",
      "links": [
        [
          "why",
          "why#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) used to add emphasis to “why” in a question."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "why on Earth"
        },
        {
          "word": "why in God's name"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "why in the world"
}

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{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "why in the world ...",
      "tags": [
        "canonical"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "interjection",
        "head": "why in the world ...?"
      },
      "expansion": "why in the world ...?",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English interjections",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Why in the world would you spend so much money on a toy?",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "used to add emphasis to “why” in a question."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "why",
          "why#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) used to add emphasis to “why” in a question."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "why on Earth"
    },
    {
      "word": "why in God's name"
    }
  ],
  "word": "why in the world"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (ca09fec and c40eb85). 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.

"why in the world" meaning in English

Interjection