Word.ws English Dictionary

fell on a grenade

fell on a grenade is the simple past of fall on a grenade.

Meaning of fall on a grenade

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

Questions about fell on a grenade

What is fell on a grenade the simple past of?
Fell on a grenade is the simple past of fall on a grenade.

Words near fell on a grenade in the dictionary

  1. fell off the turnip truck
  2. fell off the twig
  3. fell off the ugly tree
  4. fell off the wagon
  5. fell on
  6. fell on a grenade
  7. fell on deaf ears
  8. fell on hard times
  9. fell on one's face
  10. fell on one's sword
  11. fell on someone's neck

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fell on a grenade (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “fell on a grenade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fell_on_a_grenade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.