Word.ws English Dictionary

have one's hands tied

have one's hands tied verb: to be powerless to act, to be thwarted.

Verb

have one's hands tied (third-person singular simple present has one's hands tied, present participle having one's hands tied, simple past and past participle had one's hands tied)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To be powerless to act, to be thwarted.
    • I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. My hands are tied.

Forms of have one's hands tied

third-person singular presenthas one's hands tied
present participlehaving one's hands tied
past participlehad one's hands tied
pasthad one's hands tied

Questions about have one's hands tied

What does have one's hands tied mean?
Have one's hands tied means to be powerless to act, to be thwarted.
What part of speech is have one's hands tied?
Have one's hands tied is a verb.
What is the past tense of have one's hands tied?
The past tense of have one's hands tied is had one's hands tied.

Words near have one's hands tied in the dictionary

  1. have one's guard up
  2. have one's hand in the till
  3. have one's hand out
  4. have one's handful
  5. have one's hands full
  6. have one's hands tied
  7. have one's head read
  8. have one's head screwed on
  9. have one's head screwed on right
  10. have one's head screwed on straight
  11. have one's head screwed on the right way

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have one's hands tied (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “have one's hands tied.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/have_one%27s_hands_tied. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.