See whys and wherefores in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for whys and wherefores meaning in English (2.7kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "why and wherefore",
"tags": [
"singular"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "p",
"head": "whys and wherefores",
"sg": "why and wherefore"
},
"expansion": "whys and wherefores pl (normally plural, singular why and wherefore)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English coordinated pairs",
"parents": [
"Coordinated pairs",
"Terms by etymology"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
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{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English pluralia tantum",
"parents": [
"Pluralia tantum",
"Nouns",
"Lemmas"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"parents": [
"Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"Entry maintenance"
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"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1887, George Bernard Shaw, chapter 5, in An Unsocial Socialist",
"text": "I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the next county.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 1, in Anne of Green Gables",
"text": "[I]f she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "September 5 2004, Albert M. Forget, “Question integrity of vets attacking Kerry”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer",
"text": "Of the hundreds of thousands who served in Vietnam, most still do not understand the whys and wherefores of our involvement.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The reasons or motivations for a fact, action, or decision, especially the complete set of such reasons or motivations."
],
"id": "en-whys_and_wherefores-en-noun-tl5ImGj0",
"links": [
[
"set phrase",
"set phrase"
],
[
"reason",
"reason"
],
[
"motivation",
"motivation"
],
[
"complete",
"complete"
]
],
"qualifier": "set phrase",
"raw_glosses": [
"(set phrase) The reasons or motivations for a fact, action, or decision, especially the complete set of such reasons or motivations."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "explanation"
}
],
"tags": [
"plural",
"plural-normally"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"plural"
],
"word": "syyt"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "pourquoi du comment"
}
]
}
],
"word": "whys and wherefores"
}
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "why and wherefore",
"tags": [
"singular"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "p",
"head": "whys and wherefores",
"sg": "why and wherefore"
},
"expansion": "whys and wherefores pl (normally plural, singular why and wherefore)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English coordinated pairs",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English pluralia tantum",
"English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
"English terms with quotations",
"Translation table header lacks gloss"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1887, George Bernard Shaw, chapter 5, in An Unsocial Socialist",
"text": "I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the next county.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 1, in Anne of Green Gables",
"text": "[I]f she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "September 5 2004, Albert M. Forget, “Question integrity of vets attacking Kerry”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer",
"text": "Of the hundreds of thousands who served in Vietnam, most still do not understand the whys and wherefores of our involvement.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The reasons or motivations for a fact, action, or decision, especially the complete set of such reasons or motivations."
],
"links": [
[
"set phrase",
"set phrase"
],
[
"reason",
"reason"
],
[
"motivation",
"motivation"
],
[
"complete",
"complete"
]
],
"qualifier": "set phrase",
"raw_glosses": [
"(set phrase) The reasons or motivations for a fact, action, or decision, especially the complete set of such reasons or motivations."
],
"tags": [
"plural",
"plural-normally"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "explanation"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"plural"
],
"word": "syyt"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "Translations",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "pourquoi du comment"
}
],
"word": "whys and wherefores"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.