Word.ws English Dictionary

put one's hand to the plough

put one's hand to the plough verb: to begin an undertaking.

Verb

put one's hand to the plough (third-person singular simple present puts one's hand to the plough, present participle putting one's hand to the plough, simple past and past participle put one's hand to the plough)

  1. (idiomatic) To begin an undertaking.

Forms of put one's hand to the plough

third-person singular presentputs one's hand to the plough
present participleputting one's hand to the plough
past participleput one's hand to the plough
pastput one's hand to the plough

Origin of put one's hand to the plough

From the King James translation of Luke 9:62 (“And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”).

Questions about put one's hand to the plough

What does put one's hand to the plough mean?
Put one's hand to the plough means to begin an undertaking.
What part of speech is put one's hand to the plough?
Put one's hand to the plough is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one's hand to the plough?
The past tense of put one's hand to the plough is put one's hand to the plough.

Words near put one's hand to the plough in the dictionary

  1. put one's foot in someone's ass
  2. put one's foot in the door
  3. put one's foot up someone's ass
  4. put one's hand in one's pocket
  5. put one's hand to
  6. put one's hand to the plough
  7. put one's hand up
  8. put one's hands on
  9. put one's hands together
  10. put one's hands up
  11. put one's head above the parapet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one's hand to the plough (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “put one's hand to the plough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_one%27s_hand_to_the_plough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.