Word.ws English Dictionary

separate the men from the boys

separate the men from the boys verb: to identify (by means of a challenge or ordeal) which of a group of males are mature, courageous or masculine, and which are not.

Verb

separate the men from the boys (third-person singular simple present separates the men from the boys, present participle separating the men from the boys, simple past and past participle separated the men from the boys)

  1. To identify (by means of a challenge or ordeal) which of a group of males are mature, courageous or masculine, and which are not.

Forms of separate the men from the boys

third-person singular presentseparates the men from the boys
present participleseparating the men from the boys
past participleseparated the men from the boys
pastseparated the men from the boys

Questions about separate the men from the boys

What does separate the men from the boys mean?
Separate the men from the boys means to identify (by means of a challenge or ordeal) which of a group of males are mature, courageous or masculine, and which are not.
What part of speech is separate the men from the boys?
Separate the men from the boys is a verb.
What is the past tense of separate the men from the boys?
The past tense of separate the men from the boys is separated the men from the boys.

Words near separate the men from the boys in the dictionary

  1. separate out
  2. separate peace
  3. separate peaces
  4. separate school
  5. separate schools
  6. separate the men from the boys
  7. separate the sheep from the goats
  8. separate the wheat from the chaff
  9. separated
  10. separated out
  11. separated the men from the boys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: separate the men from the boys (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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