Word.ws English Dictionary

have one foot in the grave

have one foot in the grave verb: to be close to death, to be dying.

Verb

have one foot in the grave (third-person singular simple present has one foot in the grave, present participle having one foot in the grave, simple past and past participle had one foot in the grave)

  1. (figuratively) To be close to death, to be dying.

Forms of have one foot in the grave

third-person singular presenthas one foot in the grave
present participlehaving one foot in the grave
past participlehad one foot in the grave
pasthad one foot in the grave

Questions about have one foot in the grave

What does have one foot in the grave mean?
Have one foot in the grave means to be close to death, to be dying.
What part of speech is have one foot in the grave?
Have one foot in the grave is a verb.
What is the past tense of have one foot in the grave?
The past tense of have one foot in the grave is had one foot in the grave.

Words near have one foot in the grave in the dictionary

  1. have nothing on
  2. have nothing to lose
  3. have nots
  4. have off
  5. have on
  6. have one foot in the grave
  7. have one foot on a banana peel
  8. have one more time
  9. have one's act together
  10. have one's ass handed to one
  11. have one's back up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: have one foot in the grave (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 one foot in the grave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/have_one_foot_in_the_grave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.