Word.ws English Dictionary

have one's finger on the trigger

have one's finger on the trigger verb: to be prepared to kill someone else or as with a firearm.

Verb

have one's finger on the trigger (third-person singular simple present has one's finger on the trigger, present participle having one's finger on the trigger, simple past and past participle had one's finger on the trigger)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, sarcastic) To be prepared to kill someone else or as with a firearm.

Forms of have one's finger on the trigger

third-person singular presenthas one's finger on the trigger
present participlehaving one's finger on the trigger
past participlehad one's finger on the trigger
pasthad one's finger on the trigger

Questions about have one's finger on the trigger

What does have one's finger on the trigger mean?
Have one's finger on the trigger means to be prepared to kill someone else or as with a firearm.
What part of speech is have one's finger on the trigger?
Have one's finger on the trigger is a verb.
What is the past tense of have one's finger on the trigger?
The past tense of have one's finger on the trigger is had one's finger on the trigger.

Words near have one's finger on the trigger in the dictionary

  1. have one's ears on
  2. have one's ears pinned back
  3. have one's eye on
  4. have one's fill
  5. have one's finger on the pulse
  6. have one's finger on the trigger
  7. have one's fingers all thumbs
  8. have one's fingers in many pies
  9. have one's fingers in the till
  10. have one's fingers on the pulse
  11. have one's foot in the door

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have one's finger on the trigger (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-have one's finger on the trigger.wav.

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