Word.ws English Dictionary

throw one's weight behind

throw one's weight behind verb: to support (a cause, a decision, etc.) using one's influence; to endorse.

Verb

throw one's weight behind (third-person singular simple present throws one's weight behind, present participle throwing one's weight behind, simple past threw one's weight behind, past participle thrown one's weight behind)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To support (a cause, a decision, etc.) using one's influence; to endorse.
    • They know which candidate to throw their weight behind, even on foreign soil, and they are very good in using their mosque pulpits as campaign mouthpieces2015, Rev. Stephen Jumaat Abdul-Razaq, Islam: The Armageddon Bomb
    • Rowley called the federation branch “crazy” and “perverse” for throwing its weight behind Di Maria’s judicial review, painting the federation as the roadblock to much-needed reform.2025 April 5, John Simpson, “Police Federation under fire for backing ‘unsackable’ rogue cops”, in The Observer

Forms of throw one's weight behind

third-person singular presentthrows one's weight behind
present participlethrowing one's weight behind
pastthrew one's weight behind
past participlethrown one's weight behind

Questions about throw one's weight behind

What does throw one's weight behind mean?
Throw one's weight behind means to support (a cause, a decision, etc.) using one's influence; to endorse.
What part of speech is throw one's weight behind?
Throw one's weight behind is a verb.
What is the past tense of throw one's weight behind?
The past tense of throw one's weight behind is threw one's weight behind.

Words near throw one's weight behind in the dictionary

  1. throw one's rattle out of the pram
  2. throw one's toys out of the cot
  3. throw one's toys out of the pram
  4. throw one's voice
  5. throw one's weight around
  6. throw one's weight behind
  7. throw oneself at
  8. throw oneself behind
  9. throw oneself into
  10. throw oneself on someone's mercy
  11. throw open

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throw one's weight behind (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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