Word.ws English Dictionary

whistle in the dark

whistle in the dark verb: to make a show of bravery despite one's fears; to put on a brave face.

Verb

whistle in the dark (third-person singular simple present whistles in the dark, present participle whistling in the dark, simple past and past participle whistled in the dark)

  1. (colloquial) To make a show of bravery despite one's fears; to put on a brave face.
    • Those who seriously believe ‘There'll always be an England’ are whistling in the dark.2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 6
  2. (US, idiomatic) To speak of something despite having little knowledge of it.

Synonyms of whistle in the dark

Forms of whistle in the dark

third-person singular presentwhistles in the dark
present participlewhistling in the dark
past participlewhistled in the dark
pastwhistled in the dark

Questions about whistle in the dark

What does whistle in the dark mean?
Whistle in the dark means to make a show of bravery despite one's fears; to put on a brave face.
What part of speech is whistle in the dark?
Whistle in the dark is a verb.
What is the past tense of whistle in the dark?
The past tense of whistle in the dark is whistled in the dark.

Words near whistle in the dark in the dictionary

  1. whistle boards
  2. whistle Dixie
  3. whistle down the wind
  4. whistle for
  5. whistle graph
  6. whistle in the dark
  7. whistle in the wind
  8. whistle jigs to a milestone
  9. whistle note
  10. whistle notes
  11. whistle past

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whistle in the dark (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-whistle in the dark.ogg.

Cite this entry: “whistle in the dark.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whistle_in_the_dark. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.