Word.ws English Dictionary

whistling in the dark

whistling in the dark is the present participle and gerund of whistle in the dark.

Meaning of whistle in the dark

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.

Questions about whistling in the dark

What is whistling in the dark the present participle and gerund of?
Whistling in the dark is the present participle and gerund of whistle in the dark.

Words near whistling in the dark in the dictionary

  1. whistling ducks
  2. whistling face syndrome
  3. whistling for
  4. whistling hare
  5. whistling hares
  6. whistling in the dark
  7. whistling in the wind
  8. whistling kite
  9. whistling marmot
  10. whistling marmots
  11. whistling past

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whistling in the dark (page history and authors); 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.

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