Word.ws English Dictionary

have one's ears pinned back

have one's ears pinned back verb: to be strongly scolded, reprimanded or admonished.

Verb

have one's ears pinned back (third-person singular simple present has one's ears pinned back, present participle having one's ears pinned back, simple past and past participle had one's ears pinned back)

  1. (idiomatic) To be strongly scolded, reprimanded or admonished.
  2. (idiomatic) To be soundly defeated.

Forms of have one's ears pinned back

third-person singular presenthas one's ears pinned back
present participlehaving one's ears pinned back
past participlehad one's ears pinned back
pasthad one's ears pinned back

Questions about have one's ears pinned back

What does have one's ears pinned back mean?
Have one's ears pinned back means to be strongly scolded, reprimanded or admonished.
What part of speech is have one's ears pinned back?
Have one's ears pinned back is a verb.
What is the past tense of have one's ears pinned back?
The past tense of have one's ears pinned back is had one's ears pinned back.

Words near have one's ears pinned back in the dictionary

  1. have one's cake and eat it
  2. have one's cake and eat it too
  3. have one's ducks in a row
  4. have one's ears lowered
  5. have one's ears on
  6. have one's ears pinned back
  7. have one's eye on
  8. have one's fill
  9. have one's finger on the pulse
  10. have one's finger on the trigger
  11. have one's fingers all thumbs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have one's ears pinned back (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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