Word.ws English Dictionary

rule the day

rule the day verb: to set the standard which guides behavior; to control a situation, group, strategy, etc.

Verb

rule the day (third-person singular simple present rules the day, present participle ruling the day, simple past and past participle ruled the day)

  1. (idiomatic) To set the standard which guides behavior; to control a situation, group, strategy, etc.
    • The world was then so light,
      I scarcely felt the weight;
      Joy ruled the day, and Love the night.1700, John Dryden, The Secular Masque
    • She was a woman of caprices, and her caprices always ruled the day.1877, Frances Hodgson Burnett, chapter 5, in Theo

Forms of rule the day

third-person singular presentrules the day
present participleruling the day
past participleruled the day
pastruled the day

Questions about rule the day

What does rule the day mean?
Rule the day means to set the standard which guides behavior; to control a situation, group, strategy, etc.
What part of speech is rule the day?
Rule the day is a verb.
What is the past tense of rule the day?
The past tense of rule the day is ruled the day.

Words near rule the day in the dictionary

  1. rule OK
  2. rule on
  3. rule out
  4. rule set
  5. rule sets
  6. rule the day
  7. rule the roast
  8. rule the roost
  9. rule the school
  10. rule utilitarianism
  11. rule with a rod of iron

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rule the day (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-rule the day.ogg.

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