Word.ws English Dictionary

eating one's words

eating one's words is the present participle and gerund of eat one's words.

Meaning of eat one's words

Verb

eat one's words (third-person singular simple present eats one's words, present participle eating one's words, simple past ate one's words, past participle eaten one's words)

  1. (figuratively) To regret or retract what one has said.
    • He didn't think I could do it, but I proved him wrong and made him eat his words.

Questions about eating one's words

What is eating one's words the present participle and gerund of?
Eating one's words is the present participle and gerund of eat one's words.

Words near eating one's words in the dictionary

  1. eating one's own dog food
  2. eating one's pride
  3. eating one's seed corn
  4. eating one's terms
  5. eating one's Wheaties
  6. eating one's words
  7. eating one's young
  8. eating out
  9. eating out of someone's hand
  10. eating out of the palm of someone's hand
  11. eating psychopathologies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eating one's words (page history and authors); eat one's words (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: “eating one's words.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eating_one%27s_words. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.