"willow in the wind" meaning in English

See willow in the wind in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-willow in the wind.ogg [Australia] Forms: willows in the wind [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|willows in the wind}} willow in the wind (plural willows in the wind)
  1. (idiomatic) One whose views are easily and regularly changed by the persuasion or influence of others. Tags: idiomatic Synonyms: pushover, vacillator, waffler
    Sense id: en-willow_in_the_wind-en-noun-BRBlOtR3 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for willow in the wind meaning in English (2.3kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "willows in the wind",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "willows in the wind"
      },
      "expansion": "willow in the wind (plural willows in the wind)",
      "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"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1984 March 22, “Editorial: Smoking ban still up in the air”, in Reading Eagle, USA, retrieved 2011-06-21, page 4",
          "text": "[T]he CAB has rightfully seen Congress as a willow in the wind, bending to the wishes of whatever special interest groups and businesses speak loudest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Gerry Spence, With Justice for None, page 5",
          "text": "Justice is not a willow in the wind; justice stands immutable against unjust forces.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992 June 25, “Local: Florida Senate”, in Miami Herald, retrieved 2011-06-21, page 5B",
          "text": "If he has to vote against taxes, he will—and his vote won't change from day to day: “I'm not gonna be a willow in the wind.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Ronald Arthur Howard, Clinton D. Korver, Ethics for the Real World, page 40",
          "text": "Ethics begin to feel situational, a balancing of concerns. When this happens, we no longer have any firm ethic to stand on. We become an ethical willow in the wind.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One whose views are easily and regularly changed by the persuasion or influence of others."
      ],
      "id": "en-willow_in_the_wind-en-noun-BRBlOtR3",
      "links": [
        [
          "persuasion",
          "persuasion"
        ],
        [
          "influence",
          "influence"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) One whose views are easily and regularly changed by the persuasion or influence of others."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "pushover"
        },
        {
          "word": "vacillator"
        },
        {
          "word": "waffler"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-willow in the wind.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/43/En-au-willow_in_the_wind.ogg/En-au-willow_in_the_wind.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/En-au-willow_in_the_wind.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "willow in the wind"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "willows in the wind",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "willows in the wind"
      },
      "expansion": "willow in the wind (plural willows in the wind)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1984 March 22, “Editorial: Smoking ban still up in the air”, in Reading Eagle, USA, retrieved 2011-06-21, page 4",
          "text": "[T]he CAB has rightfully seen Congress as a willow in the wind, bending to the wishes of whatever special interest groups and businesses speak loudest.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Gerry Spence, With Justice for None, page 5",
          "text": "Justice is not a willow in the wind; justice stands immutable against unjust forces.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992 June 25, “Local: Florida Senate”, in Miami Herald, retrieved 2011-06-21, page 5B",
          "text": "If he has to vote against taxes, he will—and his vote won't change from day to day: “I'm not gonna be a willow in the wind.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008, Ronald Arthur Howard, Clinton D. Korver, Ethics for the Real World, page 40",
          "text": "Ethics begin to feel situational, a balancing of concerns. When this happens, we no longer have any firm ethic to stand on. We become an ethical willow in the wind.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One whose views are easily and regularly changed by the persuasion or influence of others."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "persuasion",
          "persuasion"
        ],
        [
          "influence",
          "influence"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) One whose views are easily and regularly changed by the persuasion or influence of others."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-willow in the wind.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/43/En-au-willow_in_the_wind.ogg/En-au-willow_in_the_wind.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/En-au-willow_in_the_wind.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "pushover"
    },
    {
      "word": "vacillator"
    },
    {
      "word": "waffler"
    }
  ],
  "word": "willow in the wind"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.