Word.ws English Dictionary

beside the mark

beside the mark prepositional phrase: beside the point, irrelevant, neither here nor there.

Prepositional phrase

  1. beside the point, irrelevant, neither here nor there

Origin of beside the mark

In reference to a mark that would be aimed at e.g. in archery.

Questions about beside the mark

What does beside the mark mean?
Beside the mark means beside the point, irrelevant, neither here nor there.
What part of speech is beside the mark?
Beside the mark is a prepositional phrase.

Words near beside the mark in the dictionary

  1. Besicovitch
  2. Besicovitch set
  3. Besicovitch sets
  4. beside
  5. beside oneself
  6. beside the mark
  7. beside the point
  8. besideness
  9. besides
  10. besides oneself
  11. besides the point

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beside the mark (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: “beside the mark.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beside_the_mark. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.