Word.ws English Dictionary

took one's eye off the ball

took one's eye off the ball is the simple past of take one's eye off the ball.

Meaning of take one's eye off the ball

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.

Questions about took one's eye off the ball

What is took one's eye off the ball the simple past of?
Took one's eye off the ball is the simple past of take one's eye off the ball.

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

  1. took one's chance
  2. took one's courage in both hands
  3. took one's cue from
  4. took one's custom elsewhere
  5. took one's ease
  6. took one's eye off the ball
  7. took one's eyes off
  8. took one's eyes off the ball
  9. took one's half out of the middle
  10. took one's hat off to
  11. took one's hook

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: took one's eye off the ball (page history and authors); 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.

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