Word.ws English Dictionary

making a meal of

making a meal of is the present participle and gerund 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 making a meal of

What is making a meal of the present participle and gerund of?
Making a meal of is the present participle and gerund of make a meal of.

Words near making a meal of in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making 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: “making a meal of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_a_meal_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.