Word.ws English Dictionary

burn one's boats

burn one's boats verb: to cut oneself off from all chance of retreat; to stake everything on success.

Verb

burn one's boats (third-person singular simple present burns one's boats, present participle burning one's boats, simple past and past participle burned one's boats or burnt one's boats)

  1. (idiomatic) To cut oneself off from all chance of retreat; to stake everything on success.

Forms of burn one's boats

third-person singular presentburns one's boats
present participleburning one's boats
past participleburned one's boats
pastburned one's boats
past participleburnt one's boats
pastburnt one's boats

Origin of burn one's boats

* Perhaps in reference to Tariq Ibn Ziyad, who gave the order to burn his own ships when he landed in Gibraltar, beginning the Islamic conquest of Spain in 711. * Perhaps in reference to Hernán Cortés, who gave the order to destroy his own ships (in reality, by sinking them) when he landed in Veracruz to begin his conquest in 1519.

Questions about burn one's boats

What does burn one's boats mean?
Burn one's boats means to cut oneself off from all chance of retreat; to stake everything on success.
What part of speech is burn one's boats?
Burn one's boats is a verb.
What is the past tense of burn one's boats?
The past tense of burn one's boats is burned one's boats.

Words near burn one's boats in the dictionary

  1. Burn Naze
  2. burn notice
  3. burn notices
  4. burn off
  5. burn one down
  6. burn one's boats
  7. burn one's bridges
  8. burn one's candle at both ends
  9. burn one's fingers
  10. burn one's toast
  11. burn out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: burn one's boats (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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