Word.ws English Dictionary

bring up the rear

bring up the rear verb: to be last in a moving line of people, to walk or go behind others in a line.

Verb

bring up the rear (third-person singular simple present brings up the rear, present participle bringing up the rear, simple past and past participle brought up the rear)

  1. (idiomatic) To be last in a moving line of people, to walk or go behind others in a line.
    • As for the guides, they were debarred from the pleasure of discourse, the one being placed in the van, and the other obliged to bring up the rear.1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC
    • Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 1, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 1
    Antonyms:
    lead the way

Antonyms of bring up the rear

Forms of bring up the rear

third-person singular presentbrings up the rear
present participlebringing up the rear
past participlebrought up the rear
pastbrought up the rear

Questions about bring up the rear

What does bring up the rear mean?
Bring up the rear means to be last in a moving line of people, to walk or go behind others in a line.
What part of speech is bring up the rear?
Bring up the rear is a verb.
What is the past tense of bring up the rear?
The past tense of bring up the rear is brought up the rear.

Words near bring up the rear in the dictionary

  1. bring together
  2. bring under
  3. bring up
  4. bring up against
  5. bring up short
  6. bring up the rear
  7. bring up to
  8. bring upon
  9. bring with
  10. bring'st
  11. bring-and-braai

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bring up the rear (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 up the rear.ogg.

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