Word.ws English Dictionary

going to the mat

going to the mat is the present participle and gerund of go to the mat.

Meaning of go to the mat

Verb

go to the mat (third-person singular simple present goes to the mat, present participle going to the mat, simple past went to the mat, past participle gone to the mat)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To continue to struggle or fight until either victorious or defeated.
    • He was ready to go to the mat to keep the old color scheme.

Questions about going to the mat

What is going to the mat the present participle and gerund of?
Going to the mat is the present participle and gerund of go to the mat.

Words near going to the mat in the dictionary

  1. going to the devil
  2. going to the dogs
  3. going to the ends of the earth
  4. going to the ends of the world
  5. going to the goat's house for wool
  6. going to the mat
  7. going to the mats
  8. going to the mattresses
  9. going to the polls
  10. going to the restroom
  11. going to the scaffold

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going to the mat (page history and authors); go to the mat (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: “going to the mat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_to_the_mat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.