Word.ws English Dictionary

live down

live down verb: to live so as to subdue or refute.

Verb

live down (third-person singular simple present lives down, present participle living down, simple past and past participle lived down)

  1. (informal) To live so as to subdue or refute.
    • to live down slander
    • Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. Underwood had done his best to live down.1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC
  2. (idiomatic) To cause others to forget about something embarrassing that happened to oneself.
    • I'll never be able to live down that time my pants fell down at the school dance.

Forms of live down

third-person singular presentlives down
present participleliving down
past participlelived down
pastlived down

Questions about live down

What does live down mean?
Live down means to live so as to subdue or refute.
What part of speech is live down?
Live down is a verb.
What is the past tense of live down?
The past tense of live down is lived down.

Words near live down in the dictionary

  1. live coding
  2. live conductor
  3. live conductors
  4. live dangerously
  5. live dough
  6. live down
  7. live down to
  8. live drop
  9. live drops
  10. live end dead end
  11. live fast, die young

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: live down (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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