Word.ws English Dictionary

did for

did for is the simple past of do for.

Meaning of do for

Verb

do for (third-person singular simple present does for, present participle doing for, simple past did for, past participle done for)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see do, for.
    • What can I do for you?
  2. (UK, transitive) To doom; to bring about the demise of someone; to injure or harm someone.
    • Smoking did for him in the end.
    Synonyms:
    damage, wound, abuse, annoy, bewound, damnify, dere, do damage to, do ill, do violence to
  3. (UK, transitive) To prosecute someone for a criminal offence.
    • He was done for murder.
  4. (UK, dated, intransitive) To work as a domestic servant for.
    • I've left my key in my office in Manchester, my family are at Bournemouth, and the old woman who does for me goes home at nine o'clock.1915, Frank Thomas Bullen, Recollections
  5. (slang) To tire; to exhaust.
    • All this running has done for me.

Questions about did for

What is did for the simple past of?
Did for is the simple past of do for.

Words near did for in the dictionary

  1. did cheetah flips
  2. did credit
  3. did down
  4. did drugs
  5. did exactly what it said on the tin
  6. did for
  7. did good
  8. did gooseberry
  9. did ill
  10. did in
  11. did it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: did for (page history and authors); do for (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: “did for.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/did_for. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.