Word.ws English Dictionary

the wrong side of

the wrong side of phrase: older than (the stated age, typically a decade).

Phrase

the wrong side of

  1. Older than (the stated age, typically a decade).
    • She looked to be the wrong side of forty.
    • Two weary, worn-out men, one of them on the wrong side of forty, a rocking-stone to take off from, a trembling point of rock some few feet across to land upon, and a bottomless gulf to be cleared in a raging gale!1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
  2. Used in various other expressions to refer to an inimical or disfavoured condition.
    • the wrong side of the tracks, the wrong side of the law, the wrong side of history

Questions about the wrong side of

What does the wrong side of mean?
The wrong side of means older than (the stated age, typically a decade).
What part of speech is the wrong side of?
The wrong side of is a phrase.

Words near the wrong side of in the dictionary

  1. the world is too much with someone
  2. the world kept spinning
  3. the world over
  4. the world owes one a living
  5. the writing is on the wall
  6. the wrong side of
  7. the yellow peril
  8. the'e
  9. the-
  10. the-rapist
  11. Thea

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the wrong side of (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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Cite this entry: “the wrong side of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/the_wrong_side_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.