Word.ws English Dictionary

fall prey

fall prey verb: to be affected, or overcome by, a bad situation; used with to.

Verb

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

  1. To be affected, or overcome by, a bad situation; used with to.
    • Many children at our school have fallen prey to the 'flu bug.
    • Inexperienced teachers sometimes fall prey to fears that they do not know enough.
    Synonyms:
    fall victim

Synonyms of fall prey

Forms of fall prey

third-person singular presentfalls prey
present participlefalling prey
pastfell prey
past participlefallen prey

Questions about fall prey

What does fall prey mean?
Fall prey means to be affected, or overcome by, a bad situation; used with to.
What part of speech is fall prey?
Fall prey is a verb.
What is the past tense of fall prey?
The past tense of fall prey is fell prey.

Words near fall prey in the dictionary

  1. fall over oneself
  2. fall plate
  3. fall plates
  4. fall pray
  5. fall pregnant
  6. fall prey
  7. Fall Reeve
  8. Fall River
  9. Fall River County
  10. Fall River Mills
  11. fall seven times, stand up eight

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fall prey (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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