"wrench in the works" meaning in English

See wrench in the works in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: wrenches in the works [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|wrenches in the works}} wrench in the works (plural wrenches in the works)
  1. (US) Synonym of spanner in the works Tags: US Synonyms: spanner in the works [synonym, synonym-of]
    Sense id: en-wrench_in_the_works-en-noun-Wx20Pots Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for wrench in the works meaning in English (1.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wrenches in the works",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "wrenches in the works"
      },
      "expansion": "wrench in the works (plural wrenches in the works)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 72",
          "text": "Such a big staff, with ludicrously little to do, inevitably began interfering with arrangements made by the army commanders. Its actual efforts at coordination were from the start so many wrenches in the works.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of spanner in the works"
      ],
      "id": "en-wrench_in_the_works-en-noun-Wx20Pots",
      "links": [
        [
          "spanner in the works",
          "spanner in the works#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US) Synonym of spanner in the works"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "spanner in the works"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "wrench in the works"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wrenches in the works",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "wrenches in the works"
      },
      "expansion": "wrench in the works (plural wrenches in the works)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 72",
          "text": "Such a big staff, with ludicrously little to do, inevitably began interfering with arrangements made by the army commanders. Its actual efforts at coordination were from the start so many wrenches in the works.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of spanner in the works"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "spanner in the works",
          "spanner in the works#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US) Synonym of spanner in the works"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "spanner in the works"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "wrench in the works"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (e268c0e and 304864d). 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.