big fish in a small pond in English

IPA: /bɪɡ ˈfɪʃ ɪn ə smɔːl ˈpɒnd/ [UK], /bɪɡ ˈfɪʃ ɪn ə smɔl ˈpɑnd/ [US] Audio: en-au-big fish in a small pond.ogg [Australia] Forms: big fish in a small pond [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{expression}} [POS TABLE]

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "big fish in a small pond",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "expression"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Big fish in a small pond means that a person's ability is restricted in a small location or organization."
      ],
      "id": "simple-big_fish_in_a_small_pond-en-phrase-fKHohWJt",
      "raw_tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/bɪɡ ˈfɪʃ ɪn ə smɔːl ˈpɒnd/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/bɪɡ ˈfɪʃ ɪn ə smɔl ˈpɑnd/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-big fish in a small pond.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "big fish in a small pond"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "big fish in a small pond",
      "raw_tags": [
        "Expression"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "expansion": "[POS TABLE]",
      "name": "expression"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Big fish in a small pond means that a person's ability is restricted in a small location or organization."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/bɪɡ ˈfɪʃ ɪn ə smɔːl ˈpɒnd/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/bɪɡ ˈfɪʃ ɪn ə smɔl ˈpɑnd/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-big fish in a small pond.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "big fish in a small pond"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-05-21 from the simplewiktionary dump dated 2025-05-20 using wiktextract (89ebc88 and e74c913). 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.

"big fish in a small pond" meaning in English

Phrase