Word.ws English Dictionary

bust one's chops

bust one's chops verb: to exert oneself.

Verb

bust one's chops (third-person singular simple present busts one's chops, present participle busting one's chops, simple past and past participle busted one's chops or bust one's chops)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To exert oneself.
    • I've been busting my chops to get this out by end of day.

Forms of bust one's chops

third-person singular presentbusts one's chops
present participlebusting one's chops
past participlebusted one's chops
pastbusted one's chops
past participlebust one's chops
pastbust one's chops

Questions about bust one's chops

What does bust one's chops mean?
Bust one's chops means to exert oneself.
What part of speech is bust one's chops?
Bust one's chops is a verb.
What is the past tense of bust one's chops?
The past tense of bust one's chops is busted one's chops.

Words near bust one's chops in the dictionary

  1. bust on
  2. bust one's arse
  3. bust one's ass
  4. bust one's balls
  5. bust one's butt
  6. bust one's chops
  7. bust one's gut
  8. bust one's hump
  9. bust one's neck
  10. bust out
  11. bust someone's agates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bust one's chops (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-bust one's chops.ogg.

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