mean business
mean business verb: to be serious, especially where achieving a specific end against opposition is concerned.
Verb
mean business (third-person singular simple present means business, present participle meaning business, simple past and past participle meant business)
- To be serious, especially where achieving a specific end against opposition is concerned.
- Say in a week from now, I will undertake to deliver this most marvellous masterpiece, if 'Look here, 'Tony, I mean business, if you don't.1895, William Chambers, Robert Chambers, Chambers's journal
- Realising the L.C.R. meant business, the E.L.R. hastily withdrew from the negotiations and left the L.P.J.R. to make the best terms it could with the Carlisle company, […].1960 February, M. D. Greville and G. O. Holt, “Railway Development in Preston—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 125
Forms of mean business
| third-person singular present | means business |
|---|---|
| present participle | meaning business |
| past participle | meant business |
| past | meant business |
Questions about mean business
- What does mean business mean?
- Mean business means to be serious, especially where achieving a specific end against opposition is concerned.
- What part of speech is mean business?
- Mean business is a verb.
- What is the past tense of mean business?
- The past tense of mean business is meant business.
Words near mean business in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mean business (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-mean business.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-mean business.wav.
Cite this entry: “mean business.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mean_business. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.