Word.ws English Dictionary

gave ground

gave ground is the simple past of give ground.

Meaning of give ground

Verb

give ground (third-person singular simple present gives ground, present participle giving ground, simple past gave ground, past participle given ground)

  1. To retreat.
    • Those male moose at the southeast arm didn't frighten very much when we docked to fly-fish one day. One was so scared of us he just walked toward us and snorted. We gave ground.1959, Harold G. (Hack) Miller, “Rod and gun”, in Hearings […] , Washington: United States Government Printing Office, page 101
  2. (figuratively) To yield an advantage.

Questions about gave ground

What is gave ground the simple past of?
Gave ground is the simple past of give ground.

Words near gave ground in the dictionary

  1. gave ear
  2. gave face
  3. gave forth
  4. gave gray hair to
  5. gave grey hair to
  6. gave ground
  7. gave hat
  8. gave head
  9. gave heed
  10. gave in
  11. gave it a rest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gave ground (page history and authors); give ground (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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