Word.ws English Dictionary

let oneself go

let oneself go verb: to relax and enjoy oneself without restraint.

Verb

let oneself go (third-person singular simple present lets oneself go, present participle letting oneself go, simple past and past participle let oneself go)

  1. (idiomatic) To relax and enjoy oneself without restraint.
    • Fill your lungs up, and let it out slowly. Let it out slowly and relax as you exhale. […] Just let yourself go, (name), and relax.2010, Bradley W. Kuhns, Investigative Hypnosis for Investigators
  2. (idiomatic) To cease to care about one's appearance, allowing oneself to become unkempt, overweight, etc.
    • To be frank, you are an appalling sight at this very moment; you have let yourself go — but I have known you look quite ravishing.2012, Fay Weldon, The Fat Woman's Joke, page 5

Forms of let oneself go

third-person singular presentlets oneself go
present participleletting oneself go
past participlelet oneself go
pastlet oneself go

Questions about let oneself go

What does let oneself go mean?
Let oneself go means to relax and enjoy oneself without restraint.
What part of speech is let oneself go?
Let oneself go is a verb.
What is the past tense of let oneself go?
The past tense of let oneself go is let oneself go.

Words near let oneself go in the dictionary

  1. let one's fingers do the walking
  2. let one's guard down
  3. let one's hair down
  4. let one's nuts hang
  5. let one's short back and sides down
  6. let oneself go
  7. let out
  8. let past
  9. let rip
  10. let sleeping dogs lie
  11. let slide

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: let oneself go (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-let oneself go.ogg.

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