Word.ws English Dictionary

on the lines of

on the lines of preposition: similar to, but not exactly equal.

Preposition

on the lines of

  1. (idiomatic) Similar to, but not exactly equal.
    • The Minister said something on the lines of, “I don’t care if it causes people to lose their jobs.”
    • Just now he was wearing a suit of maple-syrup brown with faint but incontrovertible purple stripes. His coat was cut on the lines of one who plays Big Time in vaudeville, and was supplied with many pockets set in unexpected spots and at curious angles.1921 November 23, Leonard Hatch, “My Heart Leaps Up”, in The Outlook

Synonyms of on the lines of

Questions about on the lines of

What does on the lines of mean?
On the lines of means similar to, but not exactly equal.
What part of speech is on the lines of?
On the lines of is a preposition.

Words near on the lines of in the dictionary

  1. on the lamb
  2. on the lash
  3. on the latch
  4. on the level
  5. on the line
  6. on the lines of
  7. on the lookout
  8. on the loose
  9. on the low
  10. on the make
  11. on the march

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the lines of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “on the lines of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_lines_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.