Word.ws English Dictionary

rocking the boat

rocking the boat is the present participle and gerund of rock the boat.

Meaning of rock the boat

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)

  1. (idiomatic) 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.
    Synonyms:
    make waves

Questions about rocking the boat

What is rocking the boat the present participle and gerund of?
Rocking the boat is the present participle and gerund of rock the boat.

Words near rocking the boat in the dictionary

  1. rocking someone's world
  2. rocking stone
  3. rocking stones
  4. rocking stool
  5. rocking stools
  6. rocking the boat
  7. rocking tree
  8. rocking trees
  9. rocking up
  10. rocking-chair
  11. rocking-chair money

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rocking the boat (page history and authors); 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.

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Cite this entry: “rocking the boat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rocking_the_boat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.