Word.ws English Dictionary

behave oneself

behave oneself verb: to act in a polite or proper way.

Verb

behave oneself (third-person singular simple present behaves oneself, present participle behaving oneself, simple past and past participle behaved oneself)

  1. To act in a polite or proper way.
    • His mother threatened to spank him if he didn't behave himself.
    • "That's what happened to me the last time you fired a high snowball. Peaches. That's why I didn't want you to try another while I'm around. You wait until I'm off the campus if you've got to indulge in high jinks. Come on now, fellows, since Peaches has promised to behave himself, let the merry...1912, Stratemeyer Syndicate, chapter 1, in Baseball Joe on the School Nine
    Synonyms:
    behave

Synonyms of behave oneself

Forms of behave oneself

third-person singular presentbehaves oneself
present participlebehaving oneself
past participlebehaved oneself
pastbehaved oneself

Questions about behave oneself

What does behave oneself mean?
Behave oneself means to act in a polite or proper way.
What part of speech is behave oneself?
Behave oneself is a verb.
What is the past tense of behave oneself?
The past tense of behave oneself is behaved oneself.

Words near behave oneself in the dictionary

  1. behating
  2. behats
  3. behatted
  4. behatting
  5. behave
  6. behave oneself
  7. behaved
  8. behavedst
  9. behaver
  10. behavers
  11. behaves

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: behave oneself (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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