Word.ws English Dictionary

leave it all on the field

leave it all on the field phrase: used to remind players not to dwell on minor mistakes, issues or conflicts that happened during the course of play.

Phrase

leave it all on the field

  1. (idiomatic, usually) Used to remind players not to dwell on minor mistakes, issues or conflicts that happened during the course of play.
    • Don't worry about it, just leave it all on the field.
    • Use the same advice football coaches give their teams: "Always do your best. When you return to the locker room at the end of the game, leave it all on the field. Don't replay what you might have done or what someone else might have done..."1996, Lucile Wilson, Blanche Woolls, chapter 5, in People Skills for Library Managers: A Common Sense Guide for Beginners, →ISBN, page 56
  2. (idiomatic, often) Used to encourage players or anyone to give their best performance, not sparing any effort, not going away with any unspent energy.
    • Near-synonym: give it one's best shot
    • Go and give it your all! Leave it all on the field!

Examples of leave it all on the field in a sentence

  • Football players have an expression: "he left it all on the field." Leave it all on the field when you go fishing.1997, Kevin Nelson, The Angler's Book of Daily Inspiration, Contemporary Books, →ISBN, page 61:
  • But the stakes couldn't be higher, so we've got to leave it all on the field.2012, Barack Obama, “Administration of Barack Obama, 2012/Sep. 18”, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Barack Obama...

Synonyms of leave it all on the field

Questions about leave it all on the field

What does leave it all on the field mean?
Leave it all on the field means used to remind players not to dwell on minor mistakes, issues or conflicts that happened during the course of play.
How do you use leave it all on the field in a sentence?
Football players have an expression: "he left it all on the field." Leave it all on the field when you go fishing.
What part of speech is leave it all on the field?
Leave it all on the field is a phrase.

Words near leave it all on the field in the dictionary

  1. leave be
  2. leave behind
  3. leave for dead
  4. leave for dust
  5. leave home
  6. leave it all on the field
  7. leave it all out there
  8. leave it alone
  9. leave it at that
  10. leave it be
  11. leave it out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: leave it all on the field (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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