Word.ws English Dictionary

idle threat

idle threat noun: a threat made by a person who does not mean to carry it out, and which perhaps shouldn't be taken seriously by others.

Noun

idle threat (plural idle threats)

  1. A threat made by a person who does not mean to carry it out, and which perhaps shouldn't be taken seriously by others.
    • Without any injection of money, Transport for London has said the project could be mothballed. This may not be an idle threat, given the future decline expected in London and South East commuting.2020 December 2, Industry Insider, “The costs of cutting carbon”, in Rail, page 76

Forms of idle threat

pluralidle threats

Questions about idle threat

What does idle threat mean?
Idle threat means a threat made by a person who does not mean to carry it out, and which perhaps shouldn't be taken seriously by others.
What part of speech is idle threat?
Idle threat is a noun.
What is the plural of idle threat?
The plural of idle threat is idle threats.

Words near idle threat in the dictionary

  1. idle games
  2. idle hands are the devil's playthings
  3. idle hands are the devil's tools
  4. idle hands are the devil's workshop
  5. idle hands make work for the devil
  6. idle threat
  7. idle threats
  8. idle time
  9. idle times
  10. idle wheel
  11. idle wheels

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: idle threat (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: “idle threat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/idle_threat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.