Word.ws English Dictionary

sat idly by

sat idly by is the simple past and past participle of sit idly by.

Meaning of sit idly by

Verb

sit idly by (third-person singular simple present sits idly by, present participle sitting idly by, simple past and past participle sat idly by)

  1. To remain close or stand aside while refraining from acting or intervening.
    Synonyms:
    sit by

Questions about sat idly by

What is sat idly by the simple past and past participle of?
Sat idly by is the simple past and past participle of sit idly by.

Words near sat idly by in the dictionary

  1. sat divers
  2. sat down
  3. sat fat
  4. sat fats
  5. sat for
  6. sat idly by
  7. sat in
  8. sat in for
  9. sat in judgement
  10. sat in judgment
  11. sat in on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sat idly by (page history and authors); sit idly by (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: “sat idly by.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sat_idly_by. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.