"you can't fight City Hall" meaning in English

See you can't fight City Hall in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proverb

Head templates: {{head|en|proverb|head=you can't fight City Hall}} you can't fight City Hall
  1. (chiefly US, literal, figurative) Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm). Tags: US, figuratively Synonyms: you can't fight city hall Related terms: beat the system, if you can't beat them, join them
    Sense id: en-you_can't_fight_City_Hall-en-proverb-3W5t4284 Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header, English proverbs, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb",
        "head": "you can't fight City Hall"
      },
      "expansion": "you can't fight City Hall",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "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"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English proverbs",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I see they're going to build the airport after all. I suppose you can't fight City Hall.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Sarah Schulman, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, Duke University Press, page 45:",
          "text": "As Audre Lorde, my professor at Hunter College, told our class in 1982, \"That you can't fight City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm)."
      ],
      "id": "en-you_can't_fight_City_Hall-en-proverb-3W5t4284",
      "qualifier": "literal",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US, literal, figurative) Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm)."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "beat the system"
        },
        {
          "word": "if you can't beat them, join them"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "you can't fight city hall"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "you can't fight City Hall"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "proverb",
        "head": "you can't fight City Hall"
      },
      "expansion": "you can't fight City Hall",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "beat the system"
    },
    {
      "word": "if you can't beat them, join them"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English proverbs",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I see they're going to build the airport after all. I suppose you can't fight City Hall.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Sarah Schulman, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, Duke University Press, page 45:",
          "text": "As Audre Lorde, my professor at Hunter College, told our class in 1982, \"That you can't fight City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall.\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm)."
      ],
      "qualifier": "literal",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US, literal, figurative) Nothing can be done to change the situation, because it is a governmental decision or a similarly institutional decision (e.g., high-level corporate, senior military brass, dominant cultural norm)."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "you can't fight city hall"
    }
  ],
  "word": "you can't fight City Hall"
}

Download raw JSONL data for you can't fight City Hall meaning in English (1.6kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). 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.