Word.ws English Dictionary

all fours

all fours noun: the four legs of a quadruped.

Noun

all fours

  1. The four legs of a quadruped.
  2. The four limbs of a primate.
    • to be on all fours
  3. A card game similar to whist.
    • 'Twas a bad leg allowed me to read the Pilgrim's Progress, and Mark Clark learnt All-Fours in a whitlow.1874, Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
    • Other games were cribbage, all fours, ruff and honours, French ruff, five cards, costly colours, bon ace, putt, plain dealing, Queen Nazareen, pennech, post and pair, bankafalat, beast.1882, John Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, page 104
  4. A certain game of dominos.

Questions about all fours

What does all fours mean?
All fours means the four legs of a quadruped.
What part of speech is all fours?
All fours is a noun.

Words near all fours in the dictionary

  1. All Fools' Day
  2. All Fools' Days
  3. all for
  4. all for nought
  5. all found
  6. all fours
  7. all fur and no knickers
  8. all fur coat and no knickers
  9. all garnish and no meat
  10. all gone
  11. all good

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all fours (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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