Word.ws English Dictionary

bite one's thumb

bite one's thumb verb: to express defiance by putting one's thumbnail into one's mouth and knocking it against the teeth.

Verb

bite one's thumb (third-person singular simple present bites one's thumb, present participle biting one's thumb, simple past bit one's thumb, past participle bitten one's thumb)

  1. (historical) To express defiance by putting one's thumbnail into one's mouth and knocking it against the teeth.

Forms of bite one's thumb

third-person singular presentbites one's thumb
present participlebiting one's thumb
pastbit one's thumb
past participlebitten one's thumb

Questions about bite one's thumb

What does bite one's thumb mean?
Bite one's thumb means to express defiance by putting one's thumbnail into one's mouth and knocking it against the teeth.
What part of speech is bite one's thumb?
Bite one's thumb is a verb.
What is the past tense of bite one's thumb?
The past tense of bite one's thumb is bit one's thumb.

Words near bite one's thumb in the dictionary

  1. bite off
  2. bite off more than one can chew
  3. bite on granite
  4. bite one's lip
  5. bite one's nails
  6. bite one's thumb
  7. bite one's tongue
  8. bite point
  9. bite points
  10. bite someone's hand off
  11. bite someone's head off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bite one's thumb (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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