Word.ws English Dictionary

wear out one's welcome

wear out one's welcome verb: to behave in an offensive, burdensome, or tiresome manner, with the result that one's continued presence is unwanted within a residence, commercial establishment, or social group.

Verb

wear out one's welcome (third-person singular simple present wears out one's welcome, present participle wearing out one's welcome, simple past wore out one's welcome, past participle worn out one's welcome)

  1. (idiomatic) To behave in an offensive, burdensome, or tiresome manner, with the result that one's continued presence is unwanted within a residence, commercial establishment, or social group.
    • No: he feared to "wear out his welcome," he said: they had "seen enough of him for one while": […]1889, Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], Sylvie and Bruno, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 224
    • "Well, I don't aim to have no truck with you at all," blustered the fat man. "You've just naturally wore out yore welcome with me before ever you set down. I'll ask you to go right now."1921, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 30, in Tangled Trails

Synonyms of wear out one's welcome

Antonyms

Forms of wear out one's welcome

third-person singular presentwears out one's welcome
present participlewearing out one's welcome
pastwore out one's welcome
past participleworn out one's welcome

Questions about wear out one's welcome

What does wear out one's welcome mean?
Wear out one's welcome means to behave in an offensive, burdensome, or tiresome manner, with the result that one's continued presence is unwanted within a residence, commercial establishment, or social group.
What part of speech is wear out one's welcome?
Wear out one's welcome is a verb.
What is the past tense of wear out one's welcome?
The past tense of wear out one's welcome is wore out one's welcome.

Words near wear out one's welcome in the dictionary

  1. wear on
  2. wear on one's sleeve
  3. wear one's heart on one's sleeve
  4. wear one's heart upon one's sleeve
  5. wear out
  6. wear out one's welcome
  7. wear rose-colored glasses
  8. wear sackcloth and ashes
  9. wear the breeches
  10. wear the pants
  11. wear the trousers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wear out one's welcome (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-wear out one's welcome.ogg.

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