Word.ws English Dictionary

have nothing to lose

have nothing to lose verb: to be in a situation that could improve by doing something and that will not be any worse if it fails.

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
    • you have nothing to lose but your chains

Forms of have nothing to lose

third-person singular presenthas nothing to lose
present participlehaving nothing to lose
past participlehad nothing to lose
pasthad nothing to lose

Questions about have nothing to lose

What does have nothing to lose mean?
Have nothing to lose means to be in a situation that could improve by doing something and that will not be any worse if it fails.
What part of speech is have nothing to lose?
Have nothing to lose is a verb.
What is the past tense of have nothing to lose?
The past tense of have nothing to lose is had nothing to lose.

Words near have nothing to lose in the dictionary

  1. have no time for
  2. have no use for
  3. have none of something
  4. have not
  5. have nothing on
  6. have nothing to lose
  7. have nots
  8. have off
  9. have on
  10. have one foot in the grave
  11. have one foot on a banana peel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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: “have nothing to lose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/have_nothing_to_lose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.