Word.ws English Dictionary

whistle past

whistle past verb: to ignore or deny obvious facts; to continue despite problems.

Verb

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

  1. (informal, transitive) To ignore or deny obvious facts; to continue despite problems.
    • The party can't keep whistling past these bad polling numbers.

Forms of whistle past

third-person singular presentwhistles past
present participlewhistling past
past participlewhistled past
pastwhistled past

Origin of whistle past

From whistle past the graveyard.

Questions about whistle past

What does whistle past mean?
Whistle past means to ignore or deny obvious facts; to continue despite problems.
What part of speech is whistle past?
Whistle past is a verb.
What is the past tense of whistle past?
The past tense of whistle past is whistled past.

Words near whistle past in the dictionary

  1. whistle in the dark
  2. whistle in the wind
  3. whistle jigs to a milestone
  4. whistle note
  5. whistle notes
  6. whistle past
  7. whistle past the graveyard
  8. whistle pig
  9. whistle pigs
  10. whistle post
  11. whistle posts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whistle past (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:

Cite this entry: “whistle past.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whistle_past. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.