Word.ws English Dictionary

put someone through their paces

put someone through their paces verb: to direct a horse to walk, canter, trot, etc.

Verb

put someone through their paces (third-person singular simple present puts someone through their paces, present participle putting someone through their paces, simple past and past participle put someone through their paces)

  1. (literally) To direct a horse to walk, canter, trot, etc.
    • She put Rosebud through his paces in the ring, and received her share of applause at the antics of the clever horse.1916, Vance Barnum, Joe Strong on the Trapeze
  2. (figuratively) To test several or all functions or training of a person, animal, machine, etc.
    • The new fire chief really put us through our paces: we had to wash all the fire trucks and then had two different fire drills.
    • When I test-drove the new car, the salesman let me take it out to the freeway to put it through its paces.

Forms of put someone through their paces

third-person singular presentputs someone through their paces
present participleputting someone through their paces
past participleput someone through their paces
pastput someone through their paces

Questions about put someone through their paces

What does put someone through their paces mean?
Put someone through their paces means to direct a horse to walk, canter, trot, etc.
What part of speech is put someone through their paces?
Put someone through their paces is a verb.
What is the past tense of put someone through their paces?
The past tense of put someone through their paces is put someone through their paces.

Words near put someone through their paces in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put someone through their paces (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-put one through one's paces.ogg.

Cite this entry: “put someone through their paces.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_someone_through_their_paces. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.