Word.ws English Dictionary

put one's finger in the fire

put one's finger in the fire verb: to suffer unpleasant, painful, or costly consequences as a result of becoming involved in a risky or ill-advised situation.

Verb

put one's finger in the fire (third-person singular simple present puts one's finger in the fire, present participle putting one's finger in the fire, simple past and past participle put one's finger in the fire)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To suffer unpleasant, painful, or costly consequences as a result of becoming involved in a risky or ill-advised situation.

Forms of put one's finger in the fire

third-person singular presentputs one's finger in the fire
present participleputting one's finger in the fire
past participleput one's finger in the fire
pastput one's finger in the fire

Questions about put one's finger in the fire

What does put one's finger in the fire mean?
Put one's finger in the fire means to suffer unpleasant, painful, or costly consequences as a result of becoming involved in a risky or ill-advised situation.
What part of speech is put one's finger in the fire?
Put one's finger in the fire is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one's finger in the fire?
The past tense of put one's finger in the fire is put one's finger in the fire.

Words near put one's finger in the fire in the dictionary

  1. put one's cards on the table
  2. put one's ducks in a row
  3. put one's feet up
  4. put one's finger in a hole
  5. put one's finger in the dyke
  6. put one's finger in the fire
  7. put one's finger on
  8. put one's fist to
  9. put one's foot down
  10. put one's foot down on
  11. put one's foot down upon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one's finger in the fire (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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