Word.ws English Dictionary

fit the bill

fit the bill verb: to satisfy a need; to serve a purpose; to fulfill specified requirements.

Verb

fit the bill (third-person singular simple present fits the bill, present participle fitting the bill, simple past and past participle fit the bill)

  1. (idiomatic) To satisfy a need; to serve a purpose; to fulfill specified requirements.
    • Near-synonym: make the grade
    • Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at King's College London, adds that new research suggests humans with autism, schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder tend to marry each other, and that the new method can explore whether those choices, too, are rooted in DNA.
      Robinson...2017 January 9, Ann Gibbons, “Your choice of a life partner is no accident”, in Science
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To match the description.
    • The Vermont State Police spent the first few months treating Brianna’s case with scepticism concerning foul play. Brianna was profiled as a teen with an unstable living situation and a habit of moving between houses. To the police, she fit the bill for a runaway.2026 July 16, Nicholas Muhoro, “Inside the 2004 Brianna Maitland Case: One of Vermont’s Most Haunting Mysteries”, in Skip Boring, archived from the original on 21 Jul 2026

Synonyms of fit the bill

Forms of fit the bill

third-person singular presentfits the bill
present participlefitting the bill
past participlefit the bill
pastfit the bill
alternative formfill the bill

Origin of fit the bill

From earlier fill the bill, perhaps from the program (or bill) of theatrical acts.

Questions about fit the bill

What does fit the bill mean?
Fit the bill means to satisfy a need; to serve a purpose; to fulfill specified requirements.
What part of speech is fit the bill?
Fit the bill is a verb.
What is the past tense of fit the bill?
The past tense of fit the bill is fit the bill.

Words near fit the bill in the dictionary

  1. fit note
  2. fit notes
  3. fit out
  4. fit rod
  5. fit rods
  6. fit the bill
  7. fit to be tied
  8. fit to burst
  9. fit to kill
  10. fit to wake the dead
  11. fit together

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fit the bill (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-fit the bill.ogg.

Cite this entry: “fit the bill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fit_the_bill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.