Word.ws English Dictionary

have one's heart in the right place

have one's heart in the right place verb: to have good intentions.

Verb

have one's heart in the right place (third-person singular simple present has one's heart in the right place, present participle having one's heart in the right place, simple past and past participle had one's heart in the right place)

  1. (idiomatic) To have good intentions.
    • My brother doesn't always do the right thing, but he has his heart in the right place.
    • Mr. Cherry has thought proper to place most of his compliments to England in the mouth of an Irishman, a facetious gentleman, full of generosity and blunders, “with a head that may err, but a heart in the right place"1823, Andrew Cherry, The Travellers

Forms of have one's heart in the right place

third-person singular presenthas one's heart in the right place
present participlehaving one's heart in the right place
past participlehad one's heart in the right place
pasthad one's heart in the right place

Questions about have one's heart in the right place

What does have one's heart in the right place mean?
Have one's heart in the right place means to have good intentions.
What part of speech is have one's heart in the right place?
Have one's heart in the right place is a verb.
What is the past tense of have one's heart in the right place?
The past tense of have one's heart in the right place is had one's heart in the right place.

Words near have one's heart in the right place in the dictionary

  1. have one's head screwed on straight
  2. have one's head screwed on the right way
  3. have one's head up one's ass
  4. have one's heart in
  5. have one's heart in one's boots
  6. have one's heart in the right place
  7. have one's heart set on
  8. have one's heart set upon
  9. have one's hump up
  10. have one's mind about one
  11. have one's moments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have one's heart in the right place (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: en-au-have one's heart in the right place.ogg.

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