Word.ws English Dictionary

tough out

tough out verb: to endure (a hardship or challenge) by being tough: relying on one's toughness.

Verb

tough out (third-person singular simple present toughs out, present participle toughing out, simple past and past participle toughed out)

  1. (informal, transitive) To endure (a hardship or challenge) by being tough: relying on one's toughness.
    • Near-synonyms: face it out, stick it out
    • When their main crop failed because of drought, they had no choice but to tough it out: they lived in poverty that winter.

Synonyms of tough out

Forms of tough out

third-person singular presenttoughs out
present participletoughing out
past participletoughed out
pasttoughed out

Questions about tough out

What does tough out mean?
Tough out means to endure (a hardship or challenge) by being tough: relying on one's toughness.
What part of speech is tough out?
Tough out is a verb.
What is the past tense of tough out?
The past tense of tough out is toughed out.

Words near tough out in the dictionary

  1. tough nut
  2. tough nut to crack
  3. tough nuts
  4. tough nuts to crack
  5. tough on crime
  6. tough out
  7. tough pill to swallow
  8. tough pills to swallow
  9. tough road to hoe
  10. tough row to hoe
  11. tough rows to hoe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tough out (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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