rock the boat
rock the boat verb: to disturb the status quo or go against rules or conventions, as in an effort to get attention.
Verb
rock the boat (third-person singular simple present rocks the boat, present participle rocking the boat, simple past and past participle rocked the boat)
- To disturb the status quo or go against rules or conventions, as in an effort to get attention.
- I'd just jump in and fix it, but that's not my job, and I don't want to rock the boat.
- A lot of gay people I know, female and male, are conservative — perhaps even more conservative than they would be if they were non-gay because they've had such a hard struggle in life, they don't want to rock any boats.1978 August 19, Tim Cwiek, Karen DeCrow, “Interview: Former NOW President DeCrow Talks About Gay Issues”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 5, page 7
- Synonyms:
- make waves
Examples of rock the boat in a sentence
- Just when I'm asking myself if it's worth it to rock the boat and wondering if I should compromise, something will happen to keep me going.1984, Jim Bouton, Ball Four Plus Ball, page 410:
- They say offensive things to rock the boat and cause some turmoil in the world of safe, homogenized P.C. punk rock.1994, Chris Dodge, quotee, “Slap a Ham Records”, in Chaotic Noise, number 3, Roanoke, Va....
Synonyms of rock the boat
Forms of rock the boat
| third-person singular present | rocks the boat |
|---|---|
| present participle | rocking the boat |
| past participle | rocked the boat |
| past | rocked the boat |
Questions about rock the boat
- What does rock the boat mean?
- Rock the boat means to disturb the status quo or go against rules or conventions, as in an effort to get attention.
- How do you use rock the boat in a sentence?
- Just when I'm asking myself if it's worth it to rock the boat and wondering if I should compromise, something will happen to keep me going.
- What part of speech is rock the boat?
- Rock the boat is a verb.
- What is the past tense of rock the boat?
- The past tense of rock the boat is rocked the boat.
Words near rock the boat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rock the boat (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-rock the boat.ogg.
Cite this entry: “rock the boat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rock_the_boat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.