Word.ws English Dictionary

color inside the lines

color inside the lines verb: to behave conventionally, to follow the rules.

Verb

color inside the lines (third-person singular simple present colors inside the lines, present participle coloring inside the lines, simple past and past participle colored inside the lines)

  1. (intransitive) To behave conventionally, to follow the rules.
    • Too many don'ts had crimped their creativity and blocked out the wealth of dos. I admire the high standards embraced by my Christian students, but my heart also aches for those who have been raised to simply color inside the lines.2008, Craig Detweiler, A Purple State of Mind, →ISBN, page 55
    • You see, she had already learned to color inside the lines, that is, be as quiet as she could and try to become invisible to simply blend into the wall until it was safe to come out.2006, Jane Johnson, Every Kick Ain't Down II, →ISBN, page 171

Forms of color inside the lines

third-person singular presentcolors inside the lines
present participlecoloring inside the lines
past participlecolored inside the lines
pastcolored inside the lines

Origin of color inside the lines

A reference to children's coloring books, which contain line drawings to be colored in.

Questions about color inside the lines

What does color inside the lines mean?
Color inside the lines means to behave conventionally, to follow the rules.
What part of speech is color inside the lines?
Color inside the lines is a verb.
What is the past tense of color inside the lines?
The past tense of color inside the lines is colored inside the lines.

Words near color inside the lines in the dictionary

  1. color forces
  2. color grading
  3. color guard
  4. color guards
  5. color in
  6. color inside the lines
  7. color killer
  8. color killers
  9. color line
  10. color lines
  11. color man

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: color inside the lines (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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