Word.ws English Dictionary

had nothing to lose

had nothing to lose is the simple past and past participle of have nothing to lose.

Meaning of have nothing to lose

Verb

have nothing to lose (third-person singular simple present has nothing to lose, present participle having nothing to lose, simple past and past participle had nothing to lose)

  1. To be in a situation that could improve by doing something and that will not be any worse if it fails.
    • to have nothing to lose and everything to gain

Questions about had nothing to lose

What is had nothing to lose the simple past and past participle of?
Had nothing to lose is the simple past and past participle of have nothing to lose.

Words near had nothing to lose in the dictionary

  1. had no time for
  2. had no use for
  3. had none of it
  4. had none of something
  5. had nothing on
  6. had nothing to lose
  7. had off
  8. had on
  9. had one foot on a banana peel
  10. had one more time
  11. had one's act together

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: had nothing to lose (page history and authors); have nothing to lose (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: “had nothing to lose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/had_nothing_to_lose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.