Word.ws English Dictionary

eat the leek

eat the leek verb: to be compelled to take back one's words or put up with insulting treatment.

Verb

eat the leek (third-person singular simple present eats the leek, present participle eating the leek, simple past ate the leek, past participle eaten the leek)

  1. To be compelled to take back one's words or put up with insulting treatment.
    • He had eaten his leek and he was anxious to be done with it.1919, Stanley J. Weyman, “XXXV My Lord Speaks Out”, in The Great House

Forms of eat the leek

third-person singular presenteats the leek
present participleeating the leek
pastate the leek
past participleeaten the leek

Origin of eat the leek

From Act V, scene I between Fluellen and Pistol in Shakespeare's play Henry V.

Questions about eat the leek

What does eat the leek mean?
Eat the leek means to be compelled to take back one's words or put up with insulting treatment.
What part of speech is eat the leek?
Eat the leek is a verb.
What is the past tense of eat the leek?
The past tense of eat the leek is ate the leek.

Words near eat the leek in the dictionary

  1. eat someone's dust
  2. eat someone's heart
  3. eat someone's lunch
  4. eat the baby
  5. eat the bread of idleness
  6. eat the leek
  7. eat the mic
  8. eat the onion
  9. eat the rich
  10. eat the seed corn
  11. eat to live, not live to eat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eat the leek (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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