Word.ws English Dictionary

know your place

know your place verb: to accept your position within society, an organization, your family, etc. and to not want to improve it. Also the alternative form of know one's place.

Verb

know your place (third-person singular simple present knows your place, present participle knowing your place, simple past knew your place, past participle known your place)

  1. (idiomatic) To accept your position within society, an organization, your family, etc. and to not want to improve it.
    • I just get on with my job and do as I'm told - I know my place.
  2. (idiomatic) To be aware of the limit of one's role in a particular place or situation.
    • I know my place, so I don't bother the CEO when I see him around the office. I'm just an intern, after all.
  3. (idiomatic, insulting) To understand that you are less important than other people.
    • You ought to know your place, filthy commoner!

Interjection

know your place

  1. (idiomatic, insulting) Behave in a way that shows that you know what your social position is and which people are more important than you!
    • Shut the fuck up, no one cares about your robot fanfiction. Know your fucking place, trash!2016, Filthy Frank (George “Joji” Kusunoki Miller), LOSER READS HATER COMMENTS 4

Also used as

know your place is also the alternative form of know one's place.

Forms of know your place

third-person singular presentknows your place
present participleknowing your place
pastknew your place
past participleknown your place

Origin of know your place

Variant of know one's place.

Questions about know your place

What does know your place mean?
Know your place means to accept your position within society, an organization, your family, etc. and to not want to improve it.
What part of speech is know your place?
Know your place can be a verb or an interjection.
What is the past tense of know your place?
The past tense of know your place is knew your place.

Words near know your place in the dictionary

  1. know which end is up
  2. know which side of one's bread is buttered
  3. know which side of the bread is buttered
  4. know which side one's bread is buttered on
  5. know which way is up
  6. know your place
  7. know'd
  8. know'st
  9. know-all
  10. know-alls
  11. know-everything

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: know your place (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: “know your place.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/know_your_place. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.