Word.ws English Dictionary

flies too close to the sun

flies too close to the sun is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 flies too close to the sun

What is flies too close to the sun the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Flies too close to the sun is the third-person singular simple present indicative of fly too close to the sun.

Words near flies too close to the sun in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flies 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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Cite this entry: “flies too close to the sun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flies_too_close_to_the_sun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.