Word.ws English Dictionary

on the mark

on the mark prepositional phrase: precisely accurate; correct or appropriate.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Precisely accurate; correct or appropriate.
    • The writing was often good, his feel for characters on the mark, but the book was wordy.1989 Feb. 12, Beverly Lowry, "Books: Everyone is somebody's child" (review of Equal Affections by David Leavitt), New York Times (retrieved 14 Sept 2017)
    • Three eminent mainstream British economists told MPs . . . that the government had struck the right balance between cuts and spending. Austerity is bang on the mark, they said.2013 June 7, Phillip Inman, “9 reasons Keynesians aren't winning the argument”, in Guardian, UK, retrieved 14 Sep 2017

Synonyms of on the mark

Antonyms

Questions about on the mark

What does on the mark mean?
On the mark means precisely accurate; correct or appropriate.
What part of speech is on the mark?
On the mark is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the mark in the dictionary

  1. on the lookout
  2. on the loose
  3. on the low
  4. on the make
  5. on the march
  6. on the mark
  7. on the market
  8. on the mat
  9. on the mend
  10. on the mending hand
  11. on the merits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the mark (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-on the mark.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on the mark.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_mark. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.