Word.ws English Dictionary

put through the mill

put through the mill verb: to be abused or treated very harshly; to suffer intense anguish, stress, or grief.

Verb

put through the mill (third-person singular simple present puts through the mill, present participle putting through the mill, simple past and past participle put through the mill)

  1. (figuratively, transitive) to be abused or treated very harshly; to suffer intense anguish, stress, or grief.

Forms of put through the mill

third-person singular presentputs through the mill
present participleputting through the mill
past participleput through the mill
pastput through the mill

Origin of put through the mill

From through the mill.

Questions about put through the mill

What does put through the mill mean?
Put through the mill means to be abused or treated very harshly; to suffer intense anguish, stress, or grief.
What part of speech is put through the mill?
Put through the mill is a verb.
What is the past tense of put through the mill?
The past tense of put through the mill is put through the mill.

Words near put through the mill in the dictionary

  1. put the world to rights
  2. put through
  3. put through hoops
  4. put through the hoops
  5. put through the mangle
  6. put through the mill
  7. put through the wringer
  8. put throughs
  9. put to
  10. put to bed
  11. put to bed with a shovel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put through the mill (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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Cite this entry: “put through the mill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_through_the_mill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.