Word.ws English Dictionary

try on

try on verb: to test the look or fit of (a garment) by wearing it.

try on: to test the look or fit of (a garment) by wearing it
Image: loosepunctuation (Erica Kline), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

try on (third-person singular simple present tries on, present participle trying on, simple past and past participle tried on)

  1. (transitive) To test the look or fit of (a garment) by wearing it.
    • Fore God it is a delicate fine suite, rich stuffe, rare worke, and of the newest fashion; nay if the Senats businesse were neuer so hasty, I will stay to try it on, come, help good wenches helpe, so there, there there.c. 1601, Gervase Markham, The Dumb Knight, London: John Bache, 1608, Act III
    • Who is this fellow, Corinna? Some journeyman taylor, I suppose, who chuses to try on the gentleman’s cloaths before he carries them home—1763, Arthur Murphy, The Citizen, London: G. Kearsly, act II, scene 1, page 27
  2. (slang, transitive) To attempt; to undertake.
    • “He says, and gives it out publicly, “I want to see the man who’ll rob me.” Lord bless you, I have heard him, a hundred times, if I have heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in our front office, “You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever drawn there; why don’t you do a stroke of business with...1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XXV, in Great Expectations […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC
    • He could have feigned noncomprehension, but with Lanyon one didn’t try anything on.1953, Mary Renault, chapter 2, in The Charioteer, New York: Pantheon, published 1959, page 26

Forms of try on

third-person singular presenttries on
present participletrying on
past participletried on
pasttried on

Words formed from try on

Questions about try on

What does try on mean?
Try on means to test the look or fit of (a garment) by wearing it.
What part of speech is try on?
Try on is a verb.
What is the past tense of try on?
The past tense of try on is tried on.

Words near try on in the dictionary

  1. try it on the dog
  2. try it out on the dog
  3. try line
  4. try lines
  5. try me
  6. try on
  7. try on for size
  8. try one's hand
  9. try one's luck
  10. try one's wings
  11. try out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: try on (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-try on.ogg.

Cite this entry: “try on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/try_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.