Word.ws English Dictionary

set one's heart on

set one's heart on verb: to desire with intensity and commitment, to earnestly long for.

Verb

set one's heart on (third-person singular simple present sets one's heart on, present participle setting one's heart on, simple past and past participle set one's heart on)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To desire with intensity and commitment, to earnestly long for.
    • With all the willful eagerness of a child she set her heart on that visit, and from morning till night she would talk with her little boys of the journey to what seemed to her the brightest, most sacred spot on earth, next to her present home.1856, T. S. Arthur, “A True Tale of Life”, in The Wedding Guest
    • [H]e always found it hard to give up anything he had set his heart on, no matter how trivial.1876, Louisa May Alcott, chapter 5, in Rose in Bloom

Forms of set one's heart on

third-person singular presentsets one's heart on
present participlesetting one's heart on
past participleset one's heart on
pastset one's heart on
alternative formhave one's heart set on
alternative formhave one's heart set upon
alternative formset one's heart upon

Questions about set one's heart on

What does set one's heart on mean?
Set one's heart on means to desire with intensity and commitment, to earnestly long for.
What part of speech is set one's heart on?
Set one's heart on is a verb.
What is the past tense of set one's heart on?
The past tense of set one's heart on is set one's heart on.

Words near set one's heart on in the dictionary

  1. set one's affairs in order
  2. set one's cap at
  3. set one's face against
  4. set one's hair on fire
  5. set one's hand to
  6. set one's heart on
  7. set one's heart upon
  8. set one's house in order
  9. set one's shoulder to the wheel
  10. set one's sights
  11. set one's watch back

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: set one's heart on (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-set one's heart on.ogg.

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