cover someone's ass
cover someone's ass verb: to make preparations or take precautions to ensure that a person is not blamed or punished for his or her conduct.
Verb
cover someone's ass (third-person singular simple present covers someone's ass, present participle covering someone's ass, simple past and past participle covered someone's ass)
- To make preparations or take precautions to ensure that a person is not blamed or punished for his or her conduct.
- Killian kept the files because "he was trying to cover his ass," Via said. "He was always worried something would come back on him."2004 September 14, Jim Drinkard, Dave Moniz, “Secretary: Memos are forgeries”, in USA Today
Forms of cover someone's ass
| third-person singular present | covers someone's ass |
|---|---|
| present participle | covering someone's ass |
| past participle | covered someone's ass |
| past | covered someone's ass |
Words formed from cover someone's ass
Questions about cover someone's ass
- What does cover someone's ass mean?
- Cover someone's ass means to make preparations or take precautions to ensure that a person is not blamed or punished for his or her conduct.
- What part of speech is cover someone's ass?
- Cover someone's ass is a verb.
- What is the past tense of cover someone's ass?
- The past tense of cover someone's ass is covered someone's ass.
Words near cover someone's ass in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cover someone's ass (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cover someone's ass.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cover someone's ass.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cover_someone%27s_ass. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.