Word.ws English Dictionary

fall on a grenade

fall on a grenade verb: to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others.

Verb

fall on a grenade (third-person singular simple present falls on a grenade, present participle falling on a grenade, simple past fell on a grenade, past participle fallen on a grenade)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To sacrifice oneself for the sake of others.
    • Another longtime Gore adviser says: "Nobody would fall on a grenade for him. People respect him but don't love him. He just doesn't inspire that kind of loyalty."2000, U.S. News & World Report, volume 129, numbers 1-8, page 99
    • It is unrealistic in most project settings to expect a team member to “fall on a grenade” to sacrifice his life for the sake of his teammates.2007, George Pitagorsky, The Zen Approach to Project Management

Forms of fall on a grenade

third-person singular presentfalls on a grenade
present participlefalling on a grenade
pastfell on a grenade
past participlefallen on a grenade

Questions about fall on a grenade

What does fall on a grenade mean?
Fall on a grenade means to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others.
What part of speech is fall on a grenade?
Fall on a grenade is a verb.
What is the past tense of fall on a grenade?
The past tense of fall on a grenade is fell on a grenade.

Words near fall on a grenade in the dictionary

  1. fall off the twig
  2. fall off the ugly tree
  3. fall off the wagon
  4. fall offs
  5. fall on
  6. fall on a grenade
  7. fall on deaf ears
  8. fall on hard times
  9. fall on one's face
  10. fall on one's feet
  11. fall on one's sword

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fall on a grenade (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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