Word.ws English Dictionary

spin one's wheels

spin one's wheels verb: to make no progress despite making an effort; to get nowhere.

Verb

spin one's wheels (third-person singular simple present spins one's wheels, present participle spinning one's wheels, simple past and past participle spun one's wheels)

  1. (idiomatic) To make no progress despite making an effort; to get nowhere.
    • I've been spinning my wheels on this problem all week, with nothing to show for it.

Forms of spin one's wheels

third-person singular presentspins one's wheels
present participlespinning one's wheels
past participlespun one's wheels
pastspun one's wheels

Questions about spin one's wheels

What does spin one's wheels mean?
Spin one's wheels means to make no progress despite making an effort; to get nowhere.
What part of speech is spin one's wheels?
Spin one's wheels is a verb.
What is the past tense of spin one's wheels?
The past tense of spin one's wheels is spun one's wheels.

Words near spin one's wheels in the dictionary

  1. spin merchant
  2. spin merchants
  3. spin network
  4. spin networks
  5. spin off
  6. spin one's wheels
  7. spin out
  8. spin plates
  9. spin polarization
  10. spin polarizations
  11. spin quantum number

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spin one's wheels (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-spin one's wheels.ogg.

Cite this entry: “spin one's wheels.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spin_one%27s_wheels. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.