Word.ws English Dictionary

saw stars

saw stars is the simple past of see stars.

Meaning of see stars

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To experience apparent flashing lights in one's field of vision, especially after receiving a blow to the head.
    • Of course they bumped their heads smartly together, saw stars, and both came up flushed and laughing, without the ball, to resume their seats, wishing they had not left them.1868, Louisa May Alcott, chapter 43, in Little Women
  2. (figuratively) To be reeling immediately after a sudden misfortune analogous to a blow.

Questions about saw stars

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

Words near saw stars in the dictionary

  1. saw sharks
  2. saw shit
  3. saw someone right
  4. saw someone's etchings
  5. saw something green in one's eye
  6. saw stars
  7. saw stroke
  8. saw teeth
  9. saw the baby in half
  10. saw the back of
  11. saw the dark side of the moon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: saw stars (page history and authors); see stars (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: “saw stars.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/saw_stars. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.