Word.ws English Dictionary

hit the books

hit the books verb: to study, especially with particular intensity.

Verb

hit the books (third-person singular simple present hits the books, present participle hitting the books, simple past and past participle hit the books)

  1. (Australia, US, figuratively, informal) To study, especially with particular intensity.
    • They go to the beach when they should be hitting the books and then they wonder why they get bad grades.

Forms of hit the books

third-person singular presenthits the books
present participlehitting the books
past participlehit the books
pasthit the books

Questions about hit the books

What does hit the books mean?
Hit the books means to study, especially with particular intensity.
What part of speech is hit the books?
Hit the books is a verb.
What is the past tense of hit the books?
The past tense of hit the books is hit the books.

Words near hit the books in the dictionary

  1. hit tests
  2. hit the accelerator
  3. hit the ball twice
  4. hit the big time
  5. hit the board
  6. hit the books
  7. hit the bottle
  8. hit the bricks
  9. hit the buffers
  10. hit the button
  11. hit the ceiling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hit the books (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-hit the books.ogg.

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