grind one's gears
grind one's gears verb: to annoy or irritate one.
Verb
grind one's gears (third-person singular simple present grinds one's gears, present participle grinding one's gears, simple past and past participle ground one's gears)
- To annoy or irritate one.
- It really grinds my gears when inconsiderate people litter.
- Yes it has a clickbaity title, and yes, this show will grind the gears of thousands – but it should. It will open everyone’s eyes to the segregated world of dating[.]2017 July 17, Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff, “Is Love Racist? The TV show laying our biases bare”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- Synonyms:
- chap someone's hide, get someone's goat, aggravate, annoy, nettle, rankle, ruffle, sting, burn someone's ass, antagonize
Synonyms of grind one's gears
Forms of grind one's gears
| third-person singular present | grinds one's gears |
|---|---|
| present participle | grinding one's gears |
| past participle | ground one's gears |
| past | ground one's gears |
Origin of grind one's gears
As an analogy to a state in a multispeed internal combustion engine in which improperly synchronized inputs and outputs in the transmission during a gear shift (as by driver error or a mechanical fault) lead to literal grinding of gears against each other as they're forced to mesh at different speeds from one another. The noise produced is harsh and grating, and damage to the transmission can accumulate with repeated occurrences.
Questions about grind one's gears
- What does grind one's gears mean?
- Grind one's gears means to annoy or irritate one.
- What part of speech is grind one's gears?
- Grind one's gears is a verb.
- What is the past tense of grind one's gears?
- The past tense of grind one's gears is ground one's gears.
Words near grind one's gears in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: grind one's gears (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-grind one's gears.wav.
Cite this entry: “grind one's gears.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grind_one%27s_gears. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.