Word.ws English Dictionary

put the beggar on the gentleman

put the beggar on the gentleman verb: to follow up something good with something inferior.

Verb

put the beggar on the gentleman (third-person singular simple present puts the beggar on the gentleman, present participle putting the beggar on the gentleman, simple past and past participle put the beggar on the gentleman)

  1. (UK, idiomatic, obsolete, slang) To follow up something good with something inferior.
    • He called for two gills of ale, and I took my share; but I was determined not to put the beggar on the gentleman, that was my phrase to him, being a fellow workman. And when they brought the two glasses of ale, I took mine, and gave it to a man of the name of Thomas Kay; […]1838, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, volume 11
    • And there is the grandmother who says scornfully, if someone makes a good cake with poor icing, "That is putting the beggar on the gentleman".1979, Harold W. Thompson, Body, Boots, and Britches, page 504

Forms of put the beggar on the gentleman

third-person singular presentputs the beggar on the gentleman
present participleputting the beggar on the gentleman
past participleput the beggar on the gentleman
pastput the beggar on the gentleman

Questions about put the beggar on the gentleman

What does put the beggar on the gentleman mean?
Put the beggar on the gentleman means to follow up something good with something inferior.
What part of speech is put the beggar on the gentleman?
Put the beggar on the gentleman is a verb.
What is the past tense of put the beggar on the gentleman?
The past tense of put the beggar on the gentleman is put the beggar on the gentleman.

Words near put the beggar on the gentleman in the dictionary

  1. put that in your hat and wear it
  2. put that in your pipe and smoke it
  3. put the arm on someone
  4. put the bad mouth on
  5. put the bee on
  6. put the beggar on the gentleman
  7. put the bite on
  8. put the blame on
  9. put the boot in
  10. put the bottom rail on top
  11. put the brakes on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put the beggar on the gentleman (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 the beggar on the gentleman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_the_beggar_on_the_gentleman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.