Word.ws English Dictionary

take one's eye off the ball

take one's eye off the ball verb: to lose one's concentration on what is most important.

Verb

take one's eye off the ball (third-person singular simple present takes one's eye off the ball, present participle taking one's eye off the ball, simple past took one's eye off the ball, past participle taken one's eye off the ball)

  1. (idiomatic) To lose one's concentration on what is most important.
    • One of the keys to success in business is never to take your eye off the ball.
    • But I regret the eye has been off the ball in recent years, and reliability, as well as service provision, is poor.2022 December 14, Barry Doe, “NRT review meets Christmas deadlines”, in RAIL, number 972, page 43

Antonyms of take one's eye off the ball

Forms of take one's eye off the ball

third-person singular presenttakes one's eye off the ball
present participletaking one's eye off the ball
pasttook one's eye off the ball
past participletaken one's eye off the ball
alternative formtake one's eyes off the ball

Origin of take one's eye off the ball

From general sporting advice to look continuously at the ball as it moves.

Questions about take one's eye off the ball

What does take one's eye off the ball mean?
Take one's eye off the ball means to lose one's concentration on what is most important.
What part of speech is take one's eye off the ball?
Take one's eye off the ball is a verb.
What is the past tense of take one's eye off the ball?
The past tense of take one's eye off the ball is took one's eye off the ball.

Words near take one's eye off the ball in the dictionary

  1. take one's chances
  2. take one's courage in both hands
  3. take one's cue from
  4. take one's custom elsewhere
  5. take one's ease
  6. take one's eye off the ball
  7. take one's eyes off
  8. take one's eyes off the ball
  9. take one's football and go home
  10. take one's half out of the middle
  11. take one's hat off to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take one's eye off the ball (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-take one's eye off the ball.ogg.

Cite this entry: “take one's eye off the ball.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/take_one%27s_eye_off_the_ball. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.