top oneself
top oneself verb: to outdo oneself or do more than one's previous best.
Verb (1)
top oneself (third-person singular simple present tops oneself, present participle topping oneself, simple past and past participle topped oneself)
Verb (2)
top oneself (third-person singular simple present tops oneself, present participle topping oneself, simple past and past participle topped oneself)
- To commit suicide.
- But Mr Blunkett, in a remarkably frank admission, said his first thought on hearing about the 57-year-old's death was to celebrate. "You wake up and you receive a phone call - Shipman's topped himself. You have just got to think for a minute: is it too early to open a bottle? And then you discover...2004 January 16, “Blunkett admits Shipman error”, in BBC News
- Synonyms:
- suicide, take one's own life
Synonyms of top oneself
Forms of top oneself
| third-person singular present | tops oneself |
|---|---|
| present participle | topping oneself |
| past participle | topped oneself |
| past | topped oneself |
Origin of top oneself
From top (“to excel; to surpass; to beat”).
From top (“to kill”) (UK).
Questions about top oneself
- What does top oneself mean?
- Top oneself means to outdo oneself or do more than one's previous best.
- What part of speech is top oneself?
- Top oneself is a verb.
- What is the past tense of top oneself?
- The past tense of top oneself is topped oneself.
Words near top oneself in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: top oneself (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-top oneself.ogg.
Cite this entry: “top oneself.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/top_oneself. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.