Word.ws English Dictionary

answering the call of nature

answering the call of nature is the present participle and gerund of answer the call of nature.

Meaning of answer the call of nature

Verb

answer the call of nature (third-person singular simple present answers the call of nature, present participle answering the call of nature, simple past and past participle answered the call of nature)

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) To satisfy a bodily urge to urinate or defecate.
    • Che [Guevara] jumped from his seat and rushed from the room, pursued by the entire press corps. Down the hall he went, and into the men's room where, surrounded by reporters, he proceeded to answer the call of nature, shouting: "Liberdad!"1978 April 18, Charles Lynch, “Trudeau struts and frets”, in Ottawa Citizen, Canada, retrieved 03 Sep 2010, page 7

Questions about answering the call of nature

What is answering the call of nature the present participle and gerund of?
Answering the call of nature is the present participle and gerund of answer the call of nature.

Words near answering the call of nature in the dictionary

  1. answering pennants
  2. answering service
  3. answering services
  4. answering someone's prayers
  5. answering the call
  6. answering the call of nature
  7. answering the helm
  8. answering to
  9. answering up
  10. answeringly
  11. answerings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: answering the call of nature (page history and authors); answer the call of nature (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “answering the call of nature.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/answering_the_call_of_nature. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.