Word.ws English Dictionary

out of proportion

out of proportion prepositional phrase: not in a proper or pleasing relation to other things, especially in terms of size.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Not in a proper or pleasing relation to other things, especially in terms of size.
    • I only said that she wasn't as young as she used to be, and her response was out of proportion.
    • Six days of the week it [work] soils / With its sickening poison — / Just for paying a few bills! / That's out of proportion.1955, Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived, Toads

Forms of out of proportion

alternative formout of all proportion

Questions about out of proportion

What does out of proportion mean?
Out of proportion means not in a proper or pleasing relation to other things, especially in terms of size.
What part of speech is out of proportion?
Out of proportion is a prepositional phrase.

Words near out of proportion in the dictionary

  1. out of pocket
  2. out of practice
  3. out of preparation
  4. out of print
  5. out of process
  6. out of proportion
  7. out of question
  8. out of rack
  9. out of range
  10. out of reach
  11. out of season

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out of proportion (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-out of proportion.ogg.

Cite this entry: “out of proportion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/out_of_proportion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.