Word.ws English Dictionary

put one over

put one over verb: to succeed in a deception.

Verb

put one over (third-person singular simple present puts one over, present participle putting one over, simple past and past participle put one over)

  1. (idiomatic) To succeed in a deception.
  2. (idiomatic, with-on) To fool, trick, or deceive.
    • "[Y]ou surely aren't thinking you can put one over on me in this business? Tell me, you don't take me for that sort of ivory-skulled boob?"1913, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 9, in The Little Nugget
    • He is the bad-boy-made-good, and in Brazil, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, everyone loves someone who can put one over on authority.2007 May 16, Andrew Downie, “Brazil Braces for a (Bogus) Soccer Milestone”, in Time, retrieved 28 Jun 2015

Synonyms of put one over

Forms of put one over

third-person singular presentputs one over
present participleputting one over
past participleput one over
pastput one over

Questions about put one over

What does put one over mean?
Put one over means to succeed in a deception.
What part of speech is put one over?
Put one over is a verb.
What is the past tense of put one over?
The past tense of put one over is put one over.

Words near put one over in the dictionary

  1. put on the ritz
  2. put on the spot
  3. put on weight
  4. put one across
  5. put one foot in front of the other
  6. put one over
  7. put one past
  8. put one's affairs in order
  9. put one's ass on the line
  10. put one's back into
  11. put one's best foot foremost

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put one over (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 over.ogg.

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