Word.ws English Dictionary

put someone out of their misery

put someone out of their misery verb: to submit a suffering person or an animal to euthanasia.

Verb

put someone out of their misery (third-person singular simple present puts someone out of their misery, present participle putting someone out of their misery, simple past and past participle put someone out of their misery)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, transitive) To submit a suffering person or an animal to euthanasia.
  2. (figuratively, idiomatic, informal, transitive) To end or destroy something for the good of the individuals involved in it.
    • And with some United supporters actually pleading with referee Clattenburg to put them out of their misery, one more moment of brilliance from the magical Silva found Dzeko surging into the area to finish left-footed for his second.2011 October 23, Phil McNulty, “Man Utd 1 - 6 Man City”, in BBC Sport
    • It had been a mighty struggle, but they'd managed to put out her fires. The next time she tried to put Zevala out of its misery, it was going to damn well work. There was going to be nobody left to stop her.2023 October 12, HarryBlank, “Fire in the Hole”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 22 May 2024
  3. (idiomatic, informal, transitive) To relieve somebody's anxiety by supplying information that they wanted to know.
    • Well, I'll put you out of your misery: the amount we won on the lottery was only ten dollars.
    Synonyms:
    euthanise, euthanize

Synonyms of put someone out of their misery

Forms of put someone out of their misery

third-person singular presentputs someone out of their misery
present participleputting someone out of their misery
past participleput someone out of their misery
pastput someone out of their misery

Questions about put someone out of their misery

What does put someone out of their misery mean?
Put someone out of their misery means to submit a suffering person or an animal to euthanasia.
What part of speech is put someone out of their misery?
Put someone out of their misery is a verb.
What is the past tense of put someone out of their misery?
The past tense of put someone out of their misery is put someone out of their misery.

Words near put someone out of their misery in the dictionary

  1. put someone in their place
  2. put someone on blast
  3. put someone on game
  4. put someone on ice
  5. put someone on to
  6. put someone out of their misery
  7. put someone through their paces
  8. put someone to their trumps
  9. put someone under the screw
  10. put someone wise
  11. put someone's back up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put someone out of their misery (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-put someone out of their misery.wav.

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