Word.ws English Dictionary

in a corner

in a corner prepositional phrase: placed in a difficult or awkward situation.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Placed in a difficult or awkward situation.
    • Paul almost had poor Keeper in a corner
      Where he would have to quit his politics
      Or be a Christian.1947, Robert Frost, A Masque of Mercy
  2. (dated, idiomatic) Secretly; covertly.
    • something done in a corner

Questions about in a corner

What does in a corner mean?
In a corner means placed in a difficult or awkward situation.
What part of speech is in a corner?
In a corner is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in a corner in the dictionary

  1. in a box
  2. in a brace of shakes
  3. in a bubble
  4. in a canter
  5. in a cleft stick
  6. in a corner
  7. in a couple of shakes
  8. in a crack
  9. in a dither
  10. in a fair way
  11. in a family way

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in a corner (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: “in a corner.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_a_corner. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.