Word.ws English Dictionary

had the drop on

had the drop on is the simple past and past participle of have the drop on.

Meaning of have the drop on

Verb

have the drop on (third-person singular simple present has the drop on, present participle having the drop on, simple past and past participle had the drop on)

  1. (broadly, informal, transitive) To possess an advantage over another person, by acting before that person.
    • They had the drop on us and I had the feeling normally associated with nakedness. But they did not seem keen to take the plunge.1996, Jim Burtt-Smith, John French, A Drop in the Ocean: Dramatic Accounts of Aircrew Saved From the Sea, Pen and Sword, →ISBN, page 22

Questions about had the drop on

What is had the drop on the simple past and past participle of?
Had the drop on is the simple past and past participle of have the drop on.

Words near had the drop on in the dictionary

  1. had the blues
  2. had the cards
  3. had the cards in one's hands
  4. had the dirts with
  5. had the drains up
  6. had the drop on
  7. had the first idea
  8. had the floor
  9. had the heart
  10. had the hots for
  11. had the last laugh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: had the drop on (page history and authors); have the drop on (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 the drop on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/had_the_drop_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.