Word.ws English Dictionary

make a meal of

make a meal of verb: to spend more time and energy on some task than it warrants; to make something overly complicated; to make a big thing out 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
    • They both looked good – I would have been happy with either version. There was no point in making a meal of the decision, so I just picked up the one which was nearest to me on the desk and said, ‘We’ll go with this one.’a. 2004, Kate Williams, Using Information for Decision Making, Second edition, Elsevier, published 2004, →ISBN, page 53
  2. To eat something as a meal.
    • Don't walk near the tiger: it'll make a meal of you.

Forms of make a meal of

third-person singular presentmakes a meal of
present participlemaking a meal of
past participlemade a meal of
pastmade a meal of
alternative formmake a meal out of

Questions about make a meal of

What does make a meal of mean?
Make a meal of means to spend more time and energy on some task than it warrants; to make something overly complicated; to make a big thing out of.
What part of speech is make a meal of?
Make a meal of is a verb.
What is the past tense of make a meal of?
The past tense of make a meal of is made a meal of.

Words near make a meal of in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-make a meal of.ogg.

Cite this entry: “make a meal of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/make_a_meal_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.