Word.ws English Dictionary

hear the end of it

hear the end of it verb: to cease to be told about, or nagged because of, something.

Verb

hear the end of it (third-person singular simple present hears the end of it, present participle hearing the end of it, simple past and past participle heard the end of it)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To cease to be told about, or nagged because of, something.
    • If I spilled wine on their new carpet, I'd never hear the end of it.
    • The Right Hon[orable] Sir J. G. Ward. — Mr. Symes did not know it. They published this private and confidential letter without either Mr. Symes's or Mr. McCluggage's knowledge or consent. Why, if any of us were to do that sort of thing we would never hear the end of it, nor would any one else hear...1910, New Zealand. Parliament, Parliamentary Debates, volume 153, page 1156
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see hear, the, end, of, it.
    • Here Scheherazade, perceiving day, left off her story, which did so much whet the sultan's curiosity, that he was absolutely resolved to hear the end of it, and put off the sultaness's execution till the next day.1812, Arabian Nights, page 11
    • The experience of the beginning of the word when I hear the end of it must conform in some measure to what I heard a moment ago.1991, Sheila Greeve Davaney, Theology at the End of Modernity: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Kaufman, page 188

Examples of hear the end of it in a sentence

  • No choice: if I don't attend and go to our annual breakfast, I'll never hear the end of it.1992, Tim Lautzenheiser, “The Proverbial Summer Vacation” (chapter 47), in The Art of Successful Teaching: A Blend of Content & Context...
  • Kill your dreams if male validation is all that you need / Being a man ain't all that it seems / Yeah, by all means, bro, say what you need / I'll never hear the end of it […]2023, torr, “drywall”, in molecule ft. patchymate:

Forms of hear the end of it

third-person singular presenthears the end of it
present participlehearing the end of it
past participleheard the end of it
pastheard the end of it

Questions about hear the end of it

What does hear the end of it mean?
Hear the end of it means to cease to be told about, or nagged because of, something.
How do you use hear the end of it in a sentence?
No choice: if I don't attend and go to our annual breakfast, I'll never hear the end of it.
What part of speech is hear the end of it?
Hear the end of it is a verb.
What is the past tense of hear the end of it?
The past tense of hear the end of it is heard the end of it.

Words near hear the end of it in the dictionary

  1. hear of
  2. hear on the grapevine
  3. hear oneself think
  4. hear out
  5. hear tell
  6. hear the end of it
  7. hear the grass grow
  8. hear the last of
  9. hear things
  10. hear through the grapevine
  11. hear voices

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hear the end of it (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-hear the end of it.ogg.

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