Word.ws English Dictionary

left in the lurch

left in the lurch adjective: stranded in a difficult and helpless position.

Adjective

left in the lurch (not comparable)

  1. Stranded in a difficult and helpless position.

Origin of left in the lurch

From the Middle French board game of lourche (“lurch”). Players suffered a lurch if they were left in a hopeless position which rendered victory impossible.

Questions about left in the lurch

What does left in the lurch mean?
Left in the lurch means stranded in a difficult and helpless position.
What part of speech is left in the lurch?
Left in the lurch is an adjective.

Words near left in the lurch in the dictionary

  1. left hooks
  2. left ideal
  3. left ideals
  4. left identities
  5. left identity
  6. left in the lurch
  7. left inverse
  8. left inverses
  9. left it all out there
  10. left it alone
  11. left it at that

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: left in the lurch (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: “left in the lurch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/left_in_the_lurch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.