Word.ws English Dictionary

get wise

get wise verb: to be impertinent.

Verb

get wise (third-person singular simple present gets wise, present participle getting wise, simple past got wise, past participle (UK) got wise or (US) gotten wise)

  1. (intransitive, often, slang) To be impertinent.
    • He was getting wise, so I cracked him one.
    • He wasn't just getting wise, he was getting wise to my mother.
  2. (intransitive, often, slang) To become aware of or see through a deception.
    • Last night, I thought he'd sign the deal, but this morning he'd got wised somehow.
    • The substitute soon got wise to their particular tricks.

Forms of get wise

third-person singular presentgets wise
present participlegetting wise
pastgot wise
past participle UKgot wise
past participle USgotten wise

Questions about get wise

What does get wise mean?
Get wise means to be impertinent.
What part of speech is get wise?
Get wise is a verb.
What is the past tense of get wise?
The past tense of get wise is got wise.

Words near get wise in the dictionary

  1. get what one asked for
  2. get what's coming to one
  3. get wind
  4. get wind in one's jaws
  5. get wind of
  6. get wise
  7. get with
  8. get with child
  9. get with it
  10. get with the program
  11. get with the programme

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get wise (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-get wise.ogg.

Cite this entry: “get wise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_wise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.