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ate out of the palm of someone's hand

ate out of the palm of someone's hand is the simple past of eat out of the palm of someone's hand.

Meaning of eat out of the palm of someone's hand

Verb

eat out of the palm of someone's hand (third-person singular simple present eats out of the palm of someone's hand, present participle eating out of the palm of someone's hand, simple past ate out of the palm of someone's hand, past participle eaten out of the palm of someone's hand)

  1. To obey, cooperate with, or believe with no resistance or hesitation; to be completely charmed by.
    • And there I worked with children because I had been a school teacher and children ate out of the palm of my hand.1977, Mary L. Gottesfeld, Mary Evans Pharis, Profiles in Social Work, page 60
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see eat, out of, palm, hand.
    • The interpreter said, "He says, 'give him salt'." They gave him a five-cent box of Morton's salt which he ate out of the palm of his hand.1980, George H. Gay, Sole survivor: the Battle of Midway and its effects on his life, page 155

Questions about ate out of the palm of someone's hand

What is ate out of the palm of someone's hand the simple past of?
Ate out of the palm of someone's hand is the simple past of eat out of the palm of someone's hand.

Words near ate out of the palm of someone's hand in the dictionary

  1. ate one's Wheaties
  2. ate one's words
  3. ate one's young
  4. ate out
  5. ate out of someone's hand
  6. ate out of the palm of someone's hand
  7. ate pussy
  8. ate shit
  9. ate someone alive
  10. ate someone for breakfast
  11. ate someone out of house and home

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate out of the palm of someone's hand (page history and authors); eat out of the palm of someone's hand (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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