Word.ws English Dictionary

boiling over

boiling over is the present participle and gerund of boil over.

Meaning of boil over

Verb

boil over (third-person singular simple present boils over, present participle boiling over, simple past and past participle boiled over)

  1. (intransitive) To boil to such an extent as to overflow its container.
    • I forgot about the rice and it boiled over.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive, usually) To reach the point where aggressive action is taken.
    • He b'iled right over, and the tongue-lashing he give that boss Right Liver beat anything I ever listened to. There was heap of Scriptur' language in it, and more brimstone than you'd find in a match factory.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
  3. (intransitive) To act aggressively angry.
    • He boiled over all night.
  4. (intransitive) To buck aggressively.
    • The stallion boiled over, throwing Robert from her back.

Questions about boiling over

What is boiling over the present participle and gerund of?
Boiling over is the present participle and gerund of boil over.

Words near boiling over in the dictionary

  1. boiling frog
  2. boiling frogs
  3. boiling hot
  4. boiling mad
  5. boiling off
  6. boiling over
  7. boiling plate
  8. boiling plates
  9. boiling point
  10. boiling points
  11. boiling someone's piss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boiling over (page history and authors); boil over (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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Cite this entry: “boiling over.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boiling_over. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.