Word.ws English Dictionary

flown too close to the sun

flown too close to the sun is the past participle 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 flown too close to the sun

What is flown too close to the sun the past participle of?
Flown too close to the sun is the past participle of fly too close to the sun.

Words near flown too close to the sun in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flown 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: “flown too close to the sun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flown_too_close_to_the_sun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.