Word.ws English Dictionary

on the side

on the side prepositional phrase: separate from the main course of a meal.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Separate from the main course of a meal.
    • Shish kebab is skewered lamb with rice on the side.1945 June 4, Robert De Roos, “San Francisco Chef”, in Life, page 56
    • Stir sage and the remaining unsalted butter into the sauce and serve it in a bowl on the side.2004, Frédéric Couton, The Cannery Seafood House Cookbook, →ISBN, page 77
  2. Supplementary or in addition to one's usual job or income.
    • You don't want to jeopardize your primary source of income or any savings you've socked away in your effort to boost your earnings on the side.1979 November, “Beef up your job to beat inflation”, in Kipplinger's Personal Finance, page 10
    • Borg has graying black hair and is trimly built, fit from a lifetime of hard work maintaining gas pipelines while trapping on the side.December 2020, Tim Folger, “North America’s most valuable resource is at risk”, in National Geographic
  3. Additional, surreptitious; often with a connotation of dishonesty, illegality or adultery.
    • I shouted to make sure she knew that I wasn't just some ho on the side. If anyone was on the side, it was her.2009, Carl Weber, Up to No Good, →ISBN, page 158

Words formed from on the side

Questions about on the side

What does on the side mean?
On the side means separate from the main course of a meal.
What part of speech is on the side?
On the side is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the side in the dictionary

  1. on the scoot
  2. on the scrounge
  3. on the shady side of
  4. on the shelf
  5. on the sick
  6. on the side
  7. on the side of the angels
  8. on the skew
  9. on the skids
  10. on the slide
  11. on the sly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the side (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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Cite this entry: “on the side.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_side. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.