Word.ws English Dictionary

sat on one's hands

sat on one's hands is the simple past and past participle of sit on one's hands.

Meaning of sit on one's hands

Verb

sit on one's hands (third-person singular simple present sits on one's hands, present participle sitting on one's hands, simple past and past participle sat on one's hands)

  1. (idiomatic) To remain idle when action is needed, perhaps because of fear, ignorance, complacency, indecisiveness, or dislike of the person(s) or situation.
    • "Ministers cannot continue to sit on their hands, hoping this dispute will go away. Our members are fully prepared to fight tooth-and-nail for a negotiated settlement," RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch has warned.2023 March 8, Mel Holley, “TSSA accepts offer, but RMT sets new strike dates”, in RAIL, number 978, page 10
  2. (informal) To fail to applaud when expected to.
    • While Boston is a "musical town," audiences here sat on their hands a good part of the time.1946, Billboard, volume 58, number 40

Questions about sat on one's hands

What is sat on one's hands the simple past and past participle of?
Sat on one's hands is the simple past and past participle of sit on one's hands.

Words near sat on one's hands in the dictionary

  1. sat on
  2. sat on death's doorstep
  3. sat on it
  4. sat on one's arse
  5. sat on one's ass
  6. sat on one's hands
  7. sat on one's laurels
  8. sat on someone's wheel
  9. sat on the fence
  10. sat one's ass down
  11. sat one's butt down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sat on one's hands (page history and authors); sit on one's hands (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 on one's hands.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sat_on_one%27s_hands. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.