Word.ws English Dictionary

use it or lose it

use it or lose it phrase: skills or knowledge that are seldom applied are likely to be lost with time.

Phrase

use it or lose it

  1. Skills or knowledge that are seldom applied are likely to be lost with time.
    • Any piece of curriculum, devoid of an opportunity to wield it, suffers the same fate as unutilized Spanish instruction. The time-tested colloquialism is accurate: use it or lose it.2011, Tim Wagle, Paul Theobald, “Connecting Communities and Schools: Accountability in the Post-NCLB Era”, in Paul R. Carr, Brad J. Porfilio, editors, The Phenomenon of Obama and the Agenda for...
  2. Property and privileges will be lost if they are not utilized.
    • The legal rationale was simple: in much of the west, water rights operate under the "use it or lose it" principle. If you don't use the water, others had the right to appropriate it and use it themselves.2011, Marq De Villiers, Our Way Out: Principles for a Post-Apocalyptic World, McClelland & Stewart, →ISBN, page 310
  3. One's physical fitness will gradually decline if one does not exercise regularly.

Synonyms of use it or lose it

Questions about use it or lose it

What does use it or lose it mean?
Use it or lose it means skills or knowledge that are seldom applied are likely to be lost with time.
What part of speech is use it or lose it?
Use it or lose it is a phrase.

Words near use it or lose it in the dictionary

  1. use and wont
  2. use case
  3. use cases
  4. use in anger
  5. use it
  6. use it or lose it
  7. use one's coconut
  8. use one's head
  9. use one's loaf
  10. use one's noggin
  11. use tax

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: use it or lose it (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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