Word.ws English Dictionary

waited in the wings

waited in the wings is the simple past and past participle of wait in the wings.

Meaning of wait in the wings

Verb

wait in the wings (third-person singular simple present waits in the wings, present participle waiting in the wings, simple past and past participle waited in the wings)

  1. (idiomatic) To be about to become important or central.
    • Theire ^([sic]) is something obscene about a person spending $40 a seat to be told that redemtion ^([sic]) is a spaceship and that "god" is waiting in the wings to forgive the sins of the flesh.1984 February 4, Michael Bronski, “Cats: Straight and Boring”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 28, page 17

Questions about waited in the wings

What is waited in the wings the simple past and past participle of?
Waited in the wings is the simple past and past participle of wait in the wings.

Words near waited in the wings in the dictionary

  1. waited for
  2. waited for Godot
  3. waited for the ball to drop
  4. waited for the cat to jump
  5. waited for the other shoe to drop
  6. waited in the wings
  7. waited on
  8. waited on hand, foot and finger
  9. waited on someone hand and foot
  10. waited on someone hand, foot and finger
  11. waited on tables

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waited in the wings (page history and authors); wait in the wings (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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Cite this entry: “waited in the wings.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/waited_in_the_wings. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.