Word.ws English Dictionary

we are where we are

we are where we are phrase: acknowledging the shortcomings of the present situation, while focusing on dealing with it rather than either dwelling on the causes or regretting what might have been.

Phrase

we are where we are

  1. (idiomatic) acknowledging the shortcomings of the present situation, while focusing on dealing with it rather than either dwelling on the causes or regretting what might have been
    • The legislation is much delayed and many of us were of the view that it would have been better had this been introduced in parallel with the offshore planning regime, but we are where we are and we will work with the timelines in front of us.2023 January 26, Eoin Ó Broin, “General Scheme of the Marine Protected Areas Bill 2023: Discussion”, in Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Dublin: Oireachtas
    • I do not want to look backwards, but I gently suggest that there are all sorts of reasons for delays. Still, we are where we are now, and what is important is moving ahead.2024 December 11, Baroness Merron, “Bread and Flour Regulations 1998 — Question”, in House of Lords debates, UK Parliament
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see we, are, where, we, are.

Questions about we are where we are

What does we are where we are mean?
We are where we are means acknowledging the shortcomings of the present situation, while focusing on dealing with it rather than either dwelling on the causes or regretting what might have been.
What part of speech is we are where we are?
We are where we are is a phrase.

Words near we are where we are in the dictionary

  1. WDYT
  2. WDYWT
  3. we
  4. we all bleed red
  5. we all make mistakes
  6. we are where we are
  7. we aye
  8. we been knew
  9. we hardly knew ye
  10. we have always been at war with East Asia
  11. we have always been at war with Eastasia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: we are where we are (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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