Word.ws English Dictionary

egging on

egging on is the simple past of egg on.

Meaning of egg on

Verb

egg on (third-person singular simple present eggs on, present participle egging on, simple past and past participle egged on)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To encourage or coax (a person) to do something, especially something foolhardy or reckless.
    • The Neatreſſe longing for the reſt, did egge him on to tell / How faire ſhe vvas, and vvho ſhe vvas.1586, William Warner, “The Fourth Booke. Chapter XX.”, in Albions England. Or Historicall Map of the Same Island: […], London: […] George Robinson [and R. Ward] for Thomas Cadman, […], →OCLC, page 86
    Synonyms:
    provoke

Questions about egging on

What is egging on the simple past of?
Egging on is the simple past of egg on.

Words near egging on in the dictionary

  1. eggiest
  2. eggily
  3. Eggimann
  4. egginess
  5. egging
  6. egging on
  7. eggings
  8. Eggington
  9. Eggingtons
  10. Egginton
  11. Eggintons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: egging on (page history and authors); egg on (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: “egging on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/egging_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.