nail one's colours to the mast
nail one's colours to the mast verb: to clearly show one's support for a side or opinion in a dispute, often indicating an intention to defend that side to the end.
Verb
nail one's colours to the mast (third-person singular simple present nails one's colours to the mast, present participle nailing one's colours to the mast, simple past and past participle nailed one's colours to the mast)
- To clearly show one's support for a side or opinion in a dispute, often indicating an intention to defend that side to the end.
- Stood for his country’s glory fast,
And nail’d her colours to the mast!1808, Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto I, Introduction, Stanza 10 - He eventually nails his colours to the mast of strict determinism: every human action is inescapably caused by preceding events in the world, including events in the brain.2017 June 9, Steven Poole, “Behave by Robert Sapolsky review – why do we do what we do?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- Stood for his country’s glory fast,
Forms of nail one's colours to the mast
| third-person singular present | nails one's colours to the mast |
|---|---|
| present participle | nailing one's colours to the mast |
| past participle | nailed one's colours to the mast |
| past | nailed one's colours to the mast |
| alternative form | pin one's colours to the mast |
Origin of nail one's colours to the mast
From the naval military practice of displaying one's colours (signal flags or insignia) from the mast of a ship during battle to show loyalty. To surrender, one would strike one's colours, i.e. take down one's flag. If a ship nailed its colours to the mast, it would fight to the death and not surrender.
Questions about nail one's colours to the mast
- What does nail one's colours to the mast mean?
- Nail one's colours to the mast means to clearly show one's support for a side or opinion in a dispute, often indicating an intention to defend that side to the end.
- What part of speech is nail one's colours to the mast?
- Nail one's colours to the mast is a verb.
- What is the past tense of nail one's colours to the mast?
- The past tense of nail one's colours to the mast is nailed one's colours to the mast.
Words near nail one's colours to the mast in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nail one's colours to the mast (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-nail one's colours to the mast.wav.
Cite this entry: “nail one's colours to the mast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nail_one%27s_colours_to_the_mast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.