Word.ws English Dictionary

mend fences

mend fences verb: to repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap.

Verb

mend fences (third-person singular simple present mends fences, present participle mending fences, simple past and past participle mended fences)

  1. (idiomatic) To repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap.
    • I don't think he was very happy with my work, so I'm going to talk to him and try to mend fences.
    • And furthermore, just because I agree to take a walk doesn't mean we've mended fences. But he doesn't pick up.2009, Elinor Lipman, The Family Man, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 23

Forms of mend fences

third-person singular presentmends fences
present participlemending fences
past participlemended fences
pastmended fences

Questions about mend fences

What does mend fences mean?
Mend fences means to repair damage to a friendship or relationship after a disagreement or other mishap.
What part of speech is mend fences?
Mend fences is a verb.
What is the past tense of mend fences?
The past tense of mend fences is mended fences.

Words near mend fences in the dictionary

  1. Menckenian
  2. Menckenism
  3. Menckenisms
  4. Menckes
  5. mend
  6. mend fences
  7. mend one's pace
  8. mend one's ways
  9. mendability
  10. mendable
  11. mendaciloquence

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mend fences (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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