Word.ws English Dictionary

pace oneself

pace oneself verb: to behave in a slow and careful way in order not to overexert oneself.

Verb

pace oneself (third-person singular simple present paces oneself, present participle pacing oneself, simple past and past participle paced oneself)

  1. To behave in a slow and careful way in order not to overexert oneself.
    • Is this it, I remember thinking, as I dripped sweat and rainwater the last few yards to the manse. Is this when the body parts start to rebel and refuse to function?
      So I'd learned to pace myself.2006, James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack, page 201

Forms of pace oneself

third-person singular presentpaces oneself
present participlepacing oneself
past participlepaced oneself
pastpaced oneself

Questions about pace oneself

What does pace oneself mean?
Pace oneself means to behave in a slow and careful way in order not to overexert oneself.
What part of speech is pace oneself?
Pace oneself is a verb.
What is the past tense of pace oneself?
The past tense of pace oneself is paced oneself.

Words near pace oneself in the dictionary

  1. pace eggs
  2. pace lap
  3. pace laps
  4. pace notes
  5. pace off
  6. pace oneself
  7. pace out
  8. pace setter
  9. pace setters
  10. pace stick
  11. pace sticks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pace oneself (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: “pace oneself.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pace_oneself. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.