Word.ws English Dictionary

ride herd on

ride herd on verb: to supervise.

Verb

ride herd on (third-person singular simple present rides herd on, present participle riding herd on, simple past rode herd on, past participle ridden herd on)

  1. (US, idiomatic, transitive) To supervise.
    • As the new editor, his job is to ride herd on the staff and check on the tone of the articles.
    • But Rabbit feels as though he owns it all, showing up at the showroom day after day, riding herd on the paperwork and the payroll […]1981, John Updike, Rabbit is Rich

Forms of ride herd on

third-person singular presentrides herd on
present participleriding herd on
pastrode herd on
past participleridden herd on

Origin of ride herd on

From the cowboy task of driving cattle while riding along with them.

Questions about ride herd on

What does ride herd on mean?
Ride herd on means to supervise.
What part of speech is ride herd on?
Ride herd on is a verb.
What is the past tense of ride herd on?
The past tense of ride herd on is rode herd on.

Words near ride herd on in the dictionary

  1. ride for
  2. ride hard
  3. ride hard and put away wet
  4. ride height
  5. ride heights
  6. ride herd on
  7. ride high
  8. ride off
  9. ride off into the sunset
  10. ride on
  11. ride on a rail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ride herd on (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-ride herd on.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ride herd on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ride_herd_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.