Word.ws English Dictionary

should on

should on verb: to impose judgment on (oneself or others) by telling them what they should do.

Verb

should on (third-person singular simple present shoulds on, present participle shoulding on, simple past and past participle shoulded on)

  1. (US, colloquial) To impose judgment on (oneself or others) by telling them what they should do.
    • Shoulding on yourself keeps you imprisoned in other people's beliefs and it makes you a puppet on a string […]2009, Ecallaw Leachim, Ratology: Way of the Undamned, page 100
    • As we join Jesus in death to self, we stop "shoulding" on people and telling them what to do: You should read this book; you should go to this conference.2014, Jan Johnson, Invitation to the Jesus Life: Experiments in Christlikeness

Forms of should on

third-person singular presentshoulds on
present participleshoulding on
past participleshoulded on
pastshoulded on

Origin of should on

Attributed to Albert Ellis (1913–2007), American psychologist and psychotherapist; perhaps intended to evoke shit on.

Questions about should on

What does should on mean?
Should on means to impose judgment on (oneself or others) by telling them what they should do.
What part of speech is should on?
Should on is a verb.
What is the past tense of should on?
The past tense of should on is shoulded on.

Words near should on in the dictionary

  1. shoujo
  2. shoujo ai
  3. should
  4. should hope
  5. should of
  6. should on
  7. should see the other guy
  8. should'st
  9. should've
  10. should've would've could've
  11. should-cost

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: should 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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Cite this entry: “should on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/should_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.