Word.ws English Dictionary

waiting in the wings

waiting in the wings is the present participle and gerund 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 waiting in the wings

What is waiting in the wings the present participle and gerund of?
Waiting in the wings is the present participle and gerund of wait in the wings.

Words near waiting in the wings in the dictionary

  1. waiting for the ball to drop
  2. waiting for the cat to jump
  3. waiting for the other shoe to drop
  4. waiting game
  5. waiting games
  6. waiting in the wings
  7. waiting list
  8. waiting lists
  9. waiting maid
  10. waiting maids
  11. waiting mode

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waiting 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: “waiting in the wings.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/waiting_in_the_wings. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.