Word.ws English Dictionary

made a meal of

made a meal of is the simple past and past participle of make a meal of.

Meaning of make a meal of

Verb

make a meal of (third-person singular simple present makes a meal of, present participle making a meal of, simple past and past participle made a meal of)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To spend more time and energy on some task than it warrants; to make something overly complicated; to make a big thing out of.
    • Some people can make a meal out of the simplest task. If you give it to a busy person, they don’t have time to muck around on the edges and worry about it — they’ll just do it.1997, Alison Aprhys, Careers in Publishing and Bookselling: How to Get the Job You Want, Hale & Iremonger, →ISBN, page 191
  2. To eat something as a meal.
    • Don't walk near the tiger: it'll make a meal of you.

Questions about made a meal of

What is made a meal of the simple past and past participle of?
Made a meal of is the simple past and past participle of make a meal of.

Words near made a meal of in the dictionary

  1. made a light
  2. made a lip
  3. made a living
  4. made a long arm
  5. made a mark
  6. made a meal of
  7. made a meal out of
  8. made a mistake
  9. made a mockery of
  10. made a monkey of
  11. made a monkey out of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made a meal of (page history and authors); make a meal of (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: “made a meal of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/made_a_meal_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.