Word.ws English Dictionary

cross the Rubicon

cross the Rubicon verb: to make an irreversible decision or to take an action with consequences.

Verb

cross the Rubicon (third-person singular simple present crosses the Rubicon, present participle crossing the Rubicon, simple past and past participle crossed the Rubicon)

  1. (idiomatic) To make an irreversible decision or to take an action with consequences.
    • He knew that by coming out to his family he would be crossing the Rubicon, but he could not live a lie anymore.
    • Britain will cross a “legal and ethical Rubicon” if parliament votes to permit terminally ill patients to end their lives, said the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as leaders of all the UK’s major faith groups call on MPs to reject plans to allow assisted suicide.2015 September 5, Toby Helm, quoting Justin Welby, “Welby urges MPs: reject right-to-die bill that ‘crosses the Rubicon’”, in The Observer, →ISSN

cross the Rubicon meaning in Vietnamese

cross the Rubicon in Vietnamese

to make an irreversible decision
phóng lao thì phải theo lao

Forms of cross the Rubicon

third-person singular presentcrosses the Rubicon
present participlecrossing the Rubicon
past participlecrossed the Rubicon
pastcrossed the Rubicon

Origin of cross the Rubicon

Refers to Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon to wage civil war with Rome, on January 10, 49 BCE, in violation of law. Suetonius' use of the phrase the die is cast in describing this act popularized the use of that phrase, which was first attributed to the Greek dramatist Menander.

Words formed from cross the Rubicon

Questions about cross the Rubicon

What does cross the Rubicon mean?
Cross the Rubicon means to make an irreversible decision or to take an action with consequences.
What is cross the Rubicon in Vietnamese?
Cross the Rubicon in Vietnamese is phóng lao thì phải theo lao. See Cross the Rubicon meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is cross the Rubicon?
Cross the Rubicon is a verb.
What is the past tense of cross the Rubicon?
The past tense of cross the Rubicon is crossed the Rubicon.

Words near cross the Rubicon in the dictionary

  1. cross that bridge when one gets to it
  2. cross the aisle
  3. cross the floor
  4. cross the line
  5. cross the river
  6. cross the Rubicon
  7. cross the streams
  8. cross the Styx
  9. cross the t's and dot the i's
  10. cross the Thames
  11. cross the Tiber

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cross the Rubicon (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cross the Rubicon.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cross the Rubicon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cross_the_rubicon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.