Word.ws English Dictionary

saw red

saw red is the simple past of see red.

Meaning of see red

Verb

see red (third-person singular simple present sees red, present participle seeing red, simple past saw red, past participle seen red)

  1. (idiomatic) To become enraged, angry, or infuriated.
    • "So help me, God," he cried, "when I think it all over I go crazy, I see red."1901, Frank Norris, chapter 2, in The Octopus
  2. (idiomatic) To receive a red card, and be dismissed from the playing field.
    • Diop, sometimes criticized for passive play, saw red once this season when he lashed out at a foe who kicked away his legs.2005 January 26, Rob Hughes, “Soccer: Trio from Senegal is having a ball”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 10 Apr 2023, retrieved 14 Nov 2013

Questions about saw red

What is saw red the simple past of?
Saw red is the simple past of see red.

Words near saw red in the dictionary

  1. saw past the end of one's nose
  2. saw past the tip of one's nose
  3. saw pit
  4. saw pits
  5. saw reason
  6. saw red
  7. saw sam sai
  8. saw sense
  9. saw service
  10. saw set
  11. saw sets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: saw red (page history and authors); see red (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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