Word.ws English Dictionary

sit on one's hands

sit on one's hands verb: to remain idle when action is needed, perhaps because of fear, ignorance, complacency, indecisiveness, or dislike of the person(s) or situation.

Verb

sit on one's hands (third-person singular simple present sits on one's hands, present participle sitting on one's hands, simple past and past participle sat on one's hands)

  1. (idiomatic) To remain idle when action is needed, perhaps because of fear, ignorance, complacency, indecisiveness, or dislike of the person(s) or situation.
    • "Ministers cannot continue to sit on their hands, hoping this dispute will go away. Our members are fully prepared to fight tooth-and-nail for a negotiated settlement," RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch has warned.2023 March 8, Mel Holley, “TSSA accepts offer, but RMT sets new strike dates”, in RAIL, number 978, page 10
  2. (informal) To fail to applaud when expected to.
    • While Boston is a "musical town," audiences here sat on their hands a good part of the time.1946, Billboard, volume 58, number 40

Synonyms of sit on one's hands

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All synonyms of sit on one's hands

Forms of sit on one's hands

third-person singular presentsits on one's hands
present participlesitting on one's hands
past participlesat on one's hands
pastsat on one's hands

Questions about sit on one's hands

What does sit on one's hands mean?
Sit on one's hands means to remain idle when action is needed, perhaps because of fear, ignorance, complacency, indecisiveness, or dislike of the person(s) or situation.
What part of speech is sit on one's hands?
Sit on one's hands is a verb.
What is the past tense of sit on one's hands?
The past tense of sit on one's hands is sat on one's hands.

Words near sit on one's hands in the dictionary

  1. sit on a tack
  2. sit on death's doorstep
  3. sit on it
  4. sit on one's arse
  5. sit on one's ass
  6. sit on one's hands
  7. sit on one's laurels
  8. sit on someone's wheel
  9. sit on the fence
  10. sit one's ass down
  11. sit one's butt down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sit on one's hands (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-sit on one's hands.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sit on one's hands.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sit_on_one%27s_hands. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.