Word.ws English Dictionary

dine on ashes

dine on ashes verb: to mope over past defeats or failures.

Verb

dine on ashes (third-person singular simple present dines on ashes, present participle dining on ashes, simple past and past participle dined on ashes)

  1. (idiomatic) To mope over past defeats or failures.
    • His redemptive power — propels us forward. It will not allow us to continue dining on ashes. The journey is yet before us, with Him. There is yet much to be done. There are many successes yet before us, and He calls us to move toward them.2009, Charles Westbrook, Fresh Daily, page 25
    • Yet again his studies could not relieve the sense of defeat. He could not help dining on ashes. How long had he struggled on this stupid thesis?2013, Richard Black, A Cross in Time, page 16

Forms of dine on ashes

third-person singular presentdines on ashes
present participledining on ashes
past participledined on ashes
pastdined on ashes

Questions about dine on ashes

What does dine on ashes mean?
Dine on ashes means to mope over past defeats or failures.
What part of speech is dine on ashes?
Dine on ashes is a verb.
What is the past tense of dine on ashes?
The past tense of dine on ashes is dined on ashes.

Words near dine on ashes in the dictionary

  1. dine
  2. dine and dash
  3. dine and dashes
  4. dine at the Y
  5. dine in
  6. dine on ashes
  7. dine out
  8. dine out on
  9. dine with Duke Humphrey
  10. dine-and-dash
  11. dine-and-dasher

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dine on ashes (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:

Cite this entry: “dine on ashes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dine_on_ashes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.