Word.ws English Dictionary

step on someone's lines

step on someone's lines verb: to interfere with someone's role, as in a performance, by interfering with their scripted or intended speech.

Verb

step on someone's lines (third-person singular simple present steps on someone's lines, present participle stepping on someone's lines, simple past and past participle stepped on someone's lines)

  1. To interfere with someone's role, as in a performance, by interfering with their scripted or intended speech.
    • The person who introduced me stepped on my lines by giving a long summary, including all the good anecdotes.
    • ... interrupting often takes place when someone else in the group is telling a joke and the bright youngster blurts out the punch line — not because he has heard the joke before but because he sees what is coming and finds it funny. And so, out it tumbles and he has "stepped on my lines" and...1986, Carol Addison Takacs, Enjoy Your Gifted Child, page 51

Forms of step on someone's lines

third-person singular presentsteps on someone's lines
present participlestepping on someone's lines
past participlestepped on someone's lines
paststepped on someone's lines

Questions about step on someone's lines

What does step on someone's lines mean?
Step on someone's lines means to interfere with someone's role, as in a performance, by interfering with their scripted or intended speech.
What part of speech is step on someone's lines?
Step on someone's lines is a verb.
What is the past tense of step on someone's lines?
The past tense of step on someone's lines is stepped on someone's lines.

Words near step on someone's lines in the dictionary

  1. step on
  2. step on a duck
  3. step on a frog
  4. step on a rake
  5. step on it
  6. step on someone's lines
  7. step on someone's toes
  8. step on the gas
  9. step on the laughs
  10. step out
  11. step out of line

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: step on someone's lines (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “step on someone's lines.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/step_on_someone%27s_lines. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.