Word.ws English Dictionary

over the line

over the line prepositional phrase: beyond the level of what is acceptable.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Beyond the level of what is acceptable.
    • But despite being the first episode of The Simpsons to feature Marge’s naked butt, there’s nothing particularly risque about any of the nudity—if anything, the pitchfork-wielding farmer’s threat of “ass-forking” feels the most over the line.2016 January 24, Les Chappell, “TV: Review: The Simpsons (Classic), “Natural Born Kissers” (season nine, episode 25, originally aired 05/17/1998)”, in The Onion AV Club

Synonyms of over the line

Questions about over the line

What does over the line mean?
Over the line means beyond the level of what is acceptable.
What part of speech is over the line?
Over the line is a prepositional phrase.

Words near over the line in the dictionary

  1. over the hill
  2. over the hills and far away
  3. over the hump
  4. over the left
  5. over the left shoulder
  6. over the line
  7. over the long haul
  8. over the moon
  9. over the odds
  10. over the rainbow
  11. over the river

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: over the line (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-over the line.ogg.

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