Word.ws English Dictionary

flew too close to the sun

flew too close to the sun is the simple past of fly too close to the sun.

Meaning of fly too close to the sun

Verb

fly too close to the sun (third-person singular simple present flies too close to the sun, present participle flying too close to the sun, simple past flew too close to the sun, past participle flown too close to the sun)

  1. (idiomatic) To become overly ambitious or greedy; to overreach oneself; to reach for something unattainable or unachievable.
    • Did Jackson fly too close to the sun? Should he have followed the Royals' advice -- the Royals' pleading, really -- that he play only baseball?1991 March 19, Thomas Boswell, “BO LEARNS DISAPPOINTMENT”, in The Washington Post, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2026

Questions about flew too close to the sun

What is flew too close to the sun the simple past of?
Flew too close to the sun is the simple past of fly too close to the sun.

Words near flew too close to the sun in the dictionary

  1. flew the coop
  2. flew the flag
  3. flew the freak flag
  4. flew the kite
  5. flew the nest
  6. flew too close to the sun
  7. flew under the radar
  8. flew upon
  9. flew with leaden wings
  10. flew without a licence
  11. flew'd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flew too close to the sun (page history and authors); fly too close to the sun (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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