Word.ws English Dictionary

step out of line

step out of line verb: to break the rules of society.

Verb

step out of line (third-person singular simple present steps out of line, present participle stepping out of line, simple past and past participle stepped out of line)

  1. (figuratively) To break the rules of society.
    • It starts when you're always afraid / Step out of line, the man come and take you away1966 December, Stephen Stills, “For What It's Worth”performed by Buffalo Springfield
    • By recalling the lynching and imagining that as the “rightful” place for black men who step out of line, Jesse, the sheriff, can collect his nerves sufficiently to confront the demonstrators2009, Trudier Harris, The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South, LSU Press, →ISBN

Examples of step out of line in a sentence

  • If you step out of line and indulge in immoral acts, you're breaking the contract with your fellow citizens.2012, Henry Jacoby, Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper Than Swords, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 176:
  • We have been conditioned from early childhood to be afraid; if we step out of line we will not be accepted.2013, Chris Hamilton, On the Path to Enlightenment, Balboa Press, →ISBN, page 65:

Forms of step out of line

third-person singular presentsteps out of line
present participlestepping out of line
past participlestepped out of line
paststepped out of line

Questions about step out of line

What does step out of line mean?
Step out of line means to break the rules of society.
How do you use step out of line in a sentence?
If you step out of line and indulge in immoral acts, you're breaking the contract with your fellow citizens.
What part of speech is step out of line?
Step out of line is a verb.
What is the past tense of step out of line?
The past tense of step out of line is stepped out of line.

Words near step out of line in the dictionary

  1. step on someone's lines
  2. step on someone's toes
  3. step on the gas
  4. step on the laughs
  5. step out
  6. step out of line
  7. step out on someone
  8. step over
  9. step overs
  10. step pyramid
  11. step pyramids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: step out of line (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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