Word.ws English Dictionary

thwarted

thwarted is the simple past and past participle of thwart.

Meaning of thwart

Verb

thwart (third-person singular simple present thwarts, present participle thwarting, simple past and past participle thwarted)

  1. (transitive) To cause to fail; to frustrate, to prevent.
    • Our plans for a picnic were thwarted by the thunderstorm.
    Antonyms:
    promote
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To place (something) across (another thing); to position crosswise.
  3. (also, figuratively, obsolete, transitive) To hinder or obstruct by placing (something) in the way of; to block, to impede, to oppose.
  4. (ambitransitive, obsolete) To move (something) across or counter to; to cross.
    • An arrow thwarts the air.

See all 12 meanings of thwart

Adjective

thwarted (comparative more thwarted, superlative most thwarted)

  1. Frustrated, obstructed or prevented.
    • He knows I should only laugh at his desertion; and he would not like to be the one who was left, which he knows I should do for the first thwarted whim.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “A Discovery”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 205
    • There is no blockage in their instinctive life, and when the two men fight the physical closeness is not a substitute for a thwarted sexual life.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 192

Forms of thwarted

comparativemore thwarted
superlativemost thwarted

Questions about thwarted

What does thwarted mean?
Thwarted means frustrated, obstructed or prevented.
What is thwarted the simple past and past participle of?
Thwarted is the simple past and past participle of thwart.
What part of speech is thwarted?
Thwarted is an adjective.

Words near thwarted in the dictionary

  1. thwapped
  2. thwapping
  3. thwaps
  4. thwart
  5. thwartable
  6. thwarted
  7. thwartedly
  8. thwartedness
  9. thwartedst
  10. thwartee
  11. thwartees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thwarted (page history and authors); thwart (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: “thwarted.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thwarted. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.