Word.ws English Dictionary

coloring outside the lines

coloring outside the lines is the present participle and gerund of color outside the lines.

Meaning of color outside the lines

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To behave in creative or unconventional ways, to break the rules.
    • As one American problem-solving court judge put it: “We are the judges who get to color outside the lines.”2009, James L. Nolan Jr, Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court Movement
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see color, outside, lines.

Questions about coloring outside the lines

What is coloring outside the lines the present participle and gerund of?
Coloring outside the lines is the present participle and gerund of color outside the lines.

Words near coloring outside the lines in the dictionary

  1. coloring book
  2. coloring books
  3. coloring by number
  4. coloring in
  5. coloring inside the lines
  6. coloring outside the lines
  7. coloring pencil
  8. coloring pencils
  9. coloring up
  10. colorings
  11. colorisation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coloring outside the lines (page history and authors); color outside 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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