Word.ws English Dictionary

ate one's words

ate one's words is the simple past of eat one's words.

Meaning of eat one's words

Verb

eat one's words (third-person singular simple present eats one's words, present participle eating one's words, simple past ate one's words, past participle eaten one's words)

  1. (figuratively) To regret or retract what one has said.
    • He didn't think I could do it, but I proved him wrong and made him eat his words.

Questions about ate one's words

What is ate one's words the simple past of?
Ate one's words is the simple past of eat one's words.

Words near ate one's words in the dictionary

  1. ate one's own dog food
  2. ate one's pride
  3. ate one's seed corn
  4. ate one's terms
  5. ate one's Wheaties
  6. ate one's words
  7. ate one's young
  8. ate out
  9. ate out of someone's hand
  10. ate out of the palm of someone's hand
  11. ate pussy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate one's words (page history and authors); eat one's words (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: “ate one's words.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ate_one%27s_words. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.