Word.ws English Dictionary

suit the action to the word

suit the action to the word verb: to do what one has just proposed or spoken of.

Verb

suit the action to the word (third-person singular simple present suits the action to the word, present participle suiting the action to the word, simple past and past participle suited the action to the word)

  1. (idiomatic) To do what one has just proposed or spoken of.
    • “Hide!” cried Ebony, with a roll of his huge eyes, as he suited the action to the word, […]1887, R. M. Ballantyne, The Fugitives
    • After giving vent to violent expressions of hostility, he grasped the bill in his hand and pronounced it to be a huge fraud, fit only to be spat upon, and trampled under foot—whereupon the honourable member suited the action to the word!2011, James Fenton, A History of Tasmania, page 347

Forms of suit the action to the word

third-person singular presentsuits the action to the word
present participlesuiting the action to the word
past participlesuited the action to the word
pastsuited the action to the word

Origin of suit the action to the word

A phrase from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

Questions about suit the action to the word

What does suit the action to the word mean?
Suit the action to the word means to do what one has just proposed or spoken of.
What part of speech is suit the action to the word?
Suit the action to the word is a verb.
What is the past tense of suit the action to the word?
The past tense of suit the action to the word is suited the action to the word.

Words near suit the action to the word in the dictionary

  1. suit of armour
  2. suit of dittoes
  3. suit one's book
  4. suit oneself
  5. suit service
  6. suit the action to the word
  7. suit up
  8. suit-case
  9. suit-cases
  10. Suita
  11. suitabilities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: suit the action to the word (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: “suit the action to the word.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/suit_the_action_to_the_word. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.