Word.ws English Dictionary

talk out of turn

talk out of turn verb: to make a remark or provide information when it is inappropriate or indiscreet to do so, or when one does not have permission or the authority to do so.

Verb

talk out of turn (third-person singular simple present talks out of turn, present participle talking out of turn, simple past and past participle talked out of turn)

  1. (idiomatic) To make a remark or provide information when it is inappropriate or indiscreet to do so, or when one does not have permission or the authority to do so.
    • Wherever she was, she always essayed the leading social role; and it was seldom that a woman said to her: "Mrs. Volante, you are talking out of turn."1894, George Putnam, “A Lady of the Line,”, in Scribner's Magazine, volume 15, page 255
    • "If the President is wise, he will henceforth confine his press conferences to domestic questions." . . . With these words, Pundit Walter Lippmann last week reprimanded Franklin Roosevelt for talking out of turn about religious freedom in Russia.1941 October 13, “Power Politics”, in Time

Forms of talk out of turn

third-person singular presenttalks out of turn
present participletalking out of turn
past participletalked out of turn
pasttalked out of turn
alternative formspeak out of turn

Questions about talk out of turn

What does talk out of turn mean?
Talk out of turn means to make a remark or provide information when it is inappropriate or indiscreet to do so, or when one does not have permission or the authority to do so.
What part of speech is talk out of turn?
Talk out of turn is a verb.
What is the past tense of talk out of turn?
The past tense of talk out of turn is talked out of turn.

Words near talk out of turn in the dictionary

  1. talk out of
  2. talk out of one's arse
  3. talk out of one's ass
  4. talk out of one's ear
  5. talk out of school
  6. talk out of turn
  7. talk out one's ass
  8. talk over
  9. talk over someone's head
  10. talk page
  11. talk pages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: talk out of turn (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-talk out of turn.ogg.

Cite this entry: “talk out of turn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/talk_out_of_turn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.