Word.ws English Dictionary

put one's foot down

put one's foot down verb: to insist, demand, or refuse with finality.

Verb

put one's foot down (third-person singular simple present puts one's foot down, present participle putting one's foot down, simple past and past participle put one's foot down)

  1. To insist, demand, or refuse with finality.
    • I finally put my foot down and demanded to talk to someone in charge.
  2. (informal, literally) To make a vehicle go faster; accelerate.

Synonyms of put one's foot down

All synonyms of put one's foot down

Forms of put one's foot down

third-person singular presentputs one's foot down
present participleputting one's foot down
past participleput one's foot down
pastput one's foot down

Questions about put one's foot down

What does put one's foot down mean?
Put one's foot down means to insist, demand, or refuse with finality.
What part of speech is put one's foot down?
Put one's foot down is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one's foot down?
The past tense of put one's foot down is put one's foot down.

Words near put one's foot down in the dictionary

  1. put one's finger in a hole
  2. put one's finger in the dyke
  3. put one's finger in the fire
  4. put one's finger on
  5. put one's fist to
  6. put one's foot down
  7. put one's foot down on
  8. put one's foot down upon
  9. put one's foot in it
  10. put one's foot in one's mouth
  11. put one's foot in someone's ass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one's foot down (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 foot down.ogg.

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