Word.ws English Dictionary

buy the rabbit

buy the rabbit verb: to get the worst of a bargain.

Verb

buy the rabbit (third-person singular simple present buys the rabbit, present participle buying the rabbit, simple past and past participle bought the rabbit)

  1. (UK, archaic, slang) To get the worst of a bargain.
    • This is ruffian-like, by superiority of numbers to endeavor to make honest people buy the rabbit.1895, Horace White, Money and Banking, page 253

Forms of buy the rabbit

third-person singular presentbuys the rabbit
present participlebuying the rabbit
past participlebought the rabbit
pastbought the rabbit

Origin of buy the rabbit

According to Hotten: from an old story about a man selling a cat to a foreigner as a rabbit.

Questions about buy the rabbit

What does buy the rabbit mean?
Buy the rabbit means to get the worst of a bargain.
What part of speech is buy the rabbit?
Buy the rabbit is a verb.
What is the past tense of buy the rabbit?
The past tense of buy the rabbit is bought the rabbit.

Words near buy the rabbit in the dictionary

  1. buy straw hats in winter
  2. buy the big one
  3. buy the dip
  4. buy the dips
  5. buy the farm
  6. buy the rabbit
  7. buy the rack
  8. buy the rights
  9. buy the rumor
  10. buy the rumor, sell the fact
  11. buy the rumor, sell the news

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buy the rabbit (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “buy the rabbit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buy_the_rabbit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.