Word.ws English Dictionary

left a lot to be desired

left a lot to be desired is the simple past and past participle of leave a lot to be desired.

Meaning of leave a lot to be desired

Verb

leave a lot to be desired (third-person singular simple present leaves a lot to be desired, present participle leaving a lot to be desired, simple past and past participle left a lot to be desired)

  1. (intransitive) To be unsatisfactory; to fail to meet minimal standards of acceptability.
    • The three cylinders of these engines are 18½ in. dia. by 26 in. stroke; and as the three piston valves were all between the frames, it resulted in the monoblock casting being weak, so far as the centre cylinder was concerned, with the result that the life of these castings left a good deal to be...1944 November and December, “Conversion of L.N.E.R. "B16" Class 4-6-0 Locomotives”, in Railway Magazine, page 349

Questions about left a lot to be desired

What is left a lot to be desired the simple past and past participle of?
Left a lot to be desired is the simple past and past participle of leave a lot to be desired.

Words near left a lot to be desired in the dictionary

  1. Lefschetz fixed-point theorem
  2. lefse
  3. lefse plant
  4. lefses
  5. left
  6. left a lot to be desired
  7. left a mark
  8. left a sour taste in one's mouth
  9. left alone
  10. left anarchism
  11. left anarchist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: left a lot to be desired (page history and authors); leave a lot to be desired (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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