Word.ws English Dictionary

whistling past

whistling past is the present participle and gerund of whistle past.

Meaning of whistle past

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.

Questions about whistling past

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

Words near whistling past in the dictionary

  1. whistling in the dark
  2. whistling in the wind
  3. whistling kite
  4. whistling marmot
  5. whistling marmots
  6. whistling past
  7. whistling past the graveyard
  8. whistling shop
  9. whistling shops
  10. whistling swan
  11. whistling swans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whistling past (page history and authors); 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.

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