Word.ws English Dictionary

oar in someone's boat

oar in someone's boat noun: an interest in someone else's affairs, possibly through meddling.

Noun

oar in someone's boat

  1. An interest in someone else's affairs, possibly through meddling.
    • "Mr. Betteredge," he said, "as you have honoured me by taking an oar in my boat, and as you may, I think, be of some assistance to me before the evening is out, I see no use in our mystifying one another any longer, and I propose to set you an example of plain speaking on my side.[…]"1868 January 4 – June 6, [William] Wilkie Collins, “First Period. The Loss of the Diamond (1848). […]”, in The Moonstone. A Romance. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1868...
    Synonyms:
    stake

Synonyms of oar in someone's boat

Questions about oar in someone's boat

What does oar in someone's boat mean?
Oar in someone's boat means an interest in someone else's affairs, possibly through meddling.
What part of speech is oar in someone's boat?
Oar in someone's boat is a noun.

Words near oar in someone's boat in the dictionary

  1. OAP's
  2. OAPs
  3. oar
  4. oar blade
  5. oar blades
  6. oar in someone's boat
  7. oar-hole
  8. oar-holes
  9. oarage
  10. oarblade
  11. oarblades

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oar in someone's boat (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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