Word.ws English Dictionary

doing a perish

doing a perish is the present participle and gerund of do a perish.

Meaning of do a perish

Verb

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

  1. (Australia, slang) To suffer privation or hardship of any kind.
    • "I've had ten years of it, scratching enough out of it to dress and feed myself when the going's good and sharing a room with a girl friend or pigging it in some cheap boarding-house, and doing a perish when I've been out of a job. I've got to the point where I can't stick it any longer."1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 5
  2. (Australia, slang) To die, especially to die of thirst; to perish.

Questions about doing a perish

What is doing a perish the present participle and gerund of?
Doing a perish is the present participle and gerund of do a perish.

Words near doing a perish in the dictionary

  1. doing a lot of work
  2. doing a Melba
  3. doing a moonlight flit
  4. doing a never
  5. doing a number on
  6. doing a perish
  7. doing a power of good
  8. doing a runner
  9. doing a slow burn
  10. doing away with
  11. doing battle

Source and license

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