Word.ws English Dictionary

put one's ass on the line

put one's ass on the line verb: to take a big risk.

Verb

put one's ass on the line (third-person singular simple present puts one's ass on the line, present participle putting one's ass on the line, simple past and past participle put one's ass on the line)

  1. (idiomatic, vulgar) To take a big risk.
    • I put my ass on the line to get you here, and all I expect is a little cooperation!1990, Predator 2
    • They thought everyone was afraid. Only they would risk their lives. Once people saw that we put our asses on the line, everything changed...2002, Mitchell Geoffrey Bard, From Tragedy to Triumph: The politics behind the rescue of Ethiopian Jewry

Forms of put one's ass on the line

third-person singular presentputs one's ass on the line
present participleputting one's ass on the line
past participleput one's ass on the line
pastput one's ass on the line

Questions about put one's ass on the line

What does put one's ass on the line mean?
Put one's ass on the line means to take a big risk.
What part of speech is put one's ass on the line?
Put one's ass on the line is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one's ass on the line?
The past tense of put one's ass on the line is put one's ass on the line.

Words near put one's ass on the line in the dictionary

  1. put one across
  2. put one foot in front of the other
  3. put one over
  4. put one past
  5. put one's affairs in order
  6. put one's ass on the line
  7. put one's back into
  8. put one's best foot foremost
  9. put one's best foot forward
  10. put one's cards on the table
  11. put one's ducks in a row

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one's ass on 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-put one's ass on the line.ogg.

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