Word.ws English Dictionary

colors outside the lines

colors outside the lines is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 colors outside the lines

What is colors outside the lines the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Colors outside the lines is the third-person singular simple present indicative of color outside the lines.

Words near colors outside the lines in the dictionary

  1. colorpuncture
  2. colors
  3. colors by number
  4. colors in
  5. colors inside the lines
  6. colors outside the lines
  7. colors up
  8. colorscrew
  9. colorscrews
  10. colorsome
  11. colorspace

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colors 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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Cite this entry: “colors outside the lines.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/colors_outside_the_lines. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.