Word.ws English Dictionary

pass the bottle of smoke

pass the bottle of smoke verb: to acquiesce in some falsehood; to make pretence.

Verb

pass the bottle of smoke (third-person singular simple present passes the bottle of smoke, present participle passing the bottle of smoke, simple past and past participle passed the bottle of smoke)

  1. (idiomatic, rare) To acquiesce in some falsehood; to make pretence.
    • To help myself in my turn, as the man before me helps himself in his, and pass the bottle of smoke. To keep up the pretence as to labour, and study, and patience, and being devoted to my art, and giving up many solitary days to it, and abandoning many pleasures for it, and living in it, and all the...1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC
    • The special streak of the young talent that fascinates me more is the strong impulse to stand against standardized cunning ploy of passing the bottle of smoke in the name of cinema.2000, Pradip Biswas, Sandip Ray: Take One, page 8

Forms of pass the bottle of smoke

third-person singular presentpasses the bottle of smoke
present participlepassing the bottle of smoke
past participlepassed the bottle of smoke
pastpassed the bottle of smoke

Questions about pass the bottle of smoke

What does pass the bottle of smoke mean?
Pass the bottle of smoke means to acquiesce in some falsehood; to make pretence.
What part of speech is pass the bottle of smoke?
Pass the bottle of smoke is a verb.
What is the past tense of pass the bottle of smoke?
The past tense of pass the bottle of smoke is passed the bottle of smoke.

Words near pass the bottle of smoke in the dictionary

  1. pass shots
  2. pass stool
  3. pass the bar
  4. pass the baton
  5. pass the book
  6. pass the bottle of smoke
  7. pass the buck
  8. pass the hat
  9. pass the mantle
  10. pass the parcel
  11. pass the phone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pass the bottle of smoke (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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