Word.ws English Dictionary

bring to bear

bring to bear verb: to aim a weapon at a target.

Verb

bring to bear (third-person singular simple present brings to bear, present participle bringing to bear, simple past and past participle brought to bear)

  1. (transitive) To aim a weapon at a target.
    • The battleship brought her main guns to bear on the fort.
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To apply; to employ something to achieve an intended effect.
    • to bring pressure to bear on someone, to bring influence to bear on someone
    • Every possible pressure was brought to bear on the minister to ensure the unjust law was not passed.

Forms of bring to bear

third-person singular presentbrings to bear
present participlebringing to bear
past participlebrought to bear
pastbrought to bear

Questions about bring to bear

What does bring to bear mean?
Bring to bear means to aim a weapon at a target.
What part of speech is bring to bear?
Bring to bear is a verb.
What is the past tense of bring to bear?
The past tense of bring to bear is brought to bear.

Words near bring to bear in the dictionary

  1. bring to
  2. bring to a boil
  3. bring to a close
  4. bring to a head
  5. bring to an end
  6. bring to bear
  7. bring to bed
  8. bring to book
  9. bring to ground
  10. bring to heel
  11. bring to justice

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bring to bear (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bring to bear.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bring to bear.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bring_to_bear. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.