Word.ws English Dictionary

show one's true stripes

show one's true stripes verb: to reveal one's real beliefs, sentiments, or character, especially through one's behavior.

Verb

show one's true stripes (third-person singular simple present shows one's true stripes, present participle showing one's true stripes, simple past showed one's true stripes, past participle shown one's true stripes or (US also) showed one's true stripes)

  1. (idiomatic) To reveal one's real beliefs, sentiments, or character, especially through one's behavior.
    • Fidel Castro showed his true stripes again—as if they weren't indelible enough already—by letting his MiGs shoot down two of three unarmed Cuban-exile planes off Havana's coast on Saturday.1996 February 26, “Editorial" Against Change in Cuba”, in Miami Herald, retrieved 21 Mar 2013, page 14A
    • “Now they're showing their true stripes,” Iimmy Fioretos said. “The Turks wanted to invade all along. That malarkey about ‘protecting the Constitution’ was just a pretext.”2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2011 reprint), p. 363 (Google preview)

Synonyms of show one's true stripes

Forms of show one's true stripes

third-person singular presentshows one's true stripes
present participleshowing one's true stripes
pastshowed one's true stripes
past participleshown one's true stripes
past participle US alsoshowed one's true stripes

Questions about show one's true stripes

What does show one's true stripes mean?
Show one's true stripes means to reveal one's real beliefs, sentiments, or character, especially through one's behavior.
What part of speech is show one's true stripes?
Show one's true stripes is a verb.
What is the past tense of show one's true stripes?
The past tense of show one's true stripes is showed one's true stripes.

Words near show one's true stripes in the dictionary

  1. show one's stripes
  2. show one's stuff
  3. show one's teeth
  4. show one's true colors
  5. show one's true colours
  6. show one's true stripes
  7. show one's work
  8. show oneself
  9. show out
  10. show pony
  11. show ring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: show one's true stripes (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-show one's true stripes.ogg.

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