Word.ws English Dictionary

colored inside the lines

colored inside the lines is the simple past and past participle of color inside the lines.

Meaning of color inside the lines

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

Questions about colored inside the lines

What is colored inside the lines the simple past and past participle of?
Colored inside the lines is the simple past and past participle of color inside the lines.

Words near colored inside the lines in the dictionary

  1. colored egg
  2. colored eggs
  3. colored gold
  4. colored golds
  5. colored in
  6. colored inside the lines
  7. colored outside the lines
  8. colored pencil
  9. colored pencils
  10. Colored People Time
  11. Colored People's Time

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colored inside the lines (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “colored inside the lines.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/colored_inside_the_lines. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.