Word.ws English Dictionary

dish out

dish out verb: to put (food) on to a dish ready for eating.

Verb

dish out (third-person singular simple present dishes out, present participle dishing out, simple past and past participle dished out)

  1. (transitive) To put (food) on to a dish ready for eating.
  2. (transitive) To distribute (a thing).
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To distribute or deliver something.
    • She can dish out criticism but she can't take it.
    • Saka was a threat from the first whistle; Ukraine rightly wary of him and dishing out the usual whacks.March 26 2023, David Hytner, “Kane and Bukayo Saka combine against Ukraine for England’s perfect Euros start”, in The Guardian
  4. (transitive) To hollow out, as a gutter in stone or wood.
    Synonyms:
    dish up, serve, give out

Synonyms of dish out

All synonyms of dish out

Forms of dish out

third-person singular presentdishes out
present participledishing out
past participledished out
pastdished out

Questions about dish out

What does dish out mean?
Dish out means to put (food) on to a dish ready for eating.
What part of speech is dish out?
Dish out is a verb.
What is the past tense of dish out?
The past tense of dish out is dished out.

Words near dish out in the dictionary

  1. dish drainers
  2. dish garden
  3. dish gardens
  4. dish liquid
  5. dish off
  6. dish out
  7. dish pig
  8. dish pigs
  9. dish pit
  10. dish pits
  11. dish rack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dish out (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: “dish out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dish_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.