grinding one's gears
grinding one's gears is the present participle and gerund of grind one's gears.
Meaning of grind one's gears
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.
- Synonyms:
- chap someone's hide, get someone's goat, aggravate, annoy, nettle, rankle, ruffle, sting, burn someone's ass, antagonize
Questions about grinding one's gears
- What is grinding one's gears the present participle and gerund of?
- Grinding one's gears is the present participle and gerund of grind one's gears.
Words near grinding one's gears in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: grinding one's gears (page history and authors); 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.
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Cite this entry: “grinding one's gears.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grinding_one%27s_gears. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.