Word.ws English Dictionary

cover the waterfront

cover the waterfront verb: to cover every aspect of a topic or situation.

Verb

cover the waterfront (third-person singular simple present covers the waterfront, present participle covering the waterfront, simple past and past participle covered the waterfront)

  1. To cover every aspect of a topic or situation.
    • But on the other hand, we continue to see huge sales of teacher-oriented textbooks that cover the waterfront of the major facts, laws, and theories in each and every domain of science.1975, J. W. George Ivany, Today's Science
    • "I hear you," Polly said. "I do feel better, I can't help it, and I'm very grateful for it. Does that about cover the waterfront?"1991, Stephen King, Needful Things

Forms of cover the waterfront

third-person singular presentcovers the waterfront
present participlecovering the waterfront
past participlecovered the waterfront
pastcovered the waterfront

Questions about cover the waterfront

What does cover the waterfront mean?
Cover the waterfront means to cover every aspect of a topic or situation.
What part of speech is cover the waterfront?
Cover the waterfront is a verb.
What is the past tense of cover the waterfront?
The past tense of cover the waterfront is covered the waterfront.

Words near cover the waterfront in the dictionary

  1. cover stories
  2. cover story
  3. cover the bases
  4. cover the buckle
  5. cover the spot
  6. cover the waterfront
  7. cover to cover
  8. cover up
  9. cover version
  10. cover versions
  11. cover zero

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cover the waterfront (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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