Word.ws English Dictionary

wing and prayer

wing and prayer noun: a precarious situation; a situation whose successful outcome is hoped for but uncertain.

Noun

wing and prayer (plural wings and prayers)

  1. A precarious situation; a situation whose successful outcome is hoped for but uncertain.
    • His sudden career change was a bit of a wing and prayer.
  2. An approach to addressing a problem whose effectiveness is doubtful.
    • The candidate’s speech had nothing to offer but wings and prayers.

Forms of wing and prayer

pluralwings and prayers

Origin of wing and prayer

From the earlier and more common phrase on a wing and a prayer.

Questions about wing and prayer

What does wing and prayer mean?
Wing and prayer means a precarious situation; a situation whose successful outcome is hoped for but uncertain.
What part of speech is wing and prayer?
Wing and prayer is a noun.
What is the plural of wing and prayer?
The plural of wing and prayer is wings and prayers.

Words near wing and prayer in the dictionary

  1. Winfrey
  2. Winfreys
  3. Winfrith Newburgh
  4. winful
  5. wing
  6. wing and prayer
  7. wing attack
  8. wing attacks
  9. wing back
  10. wing backs
  11. wing bar

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wing and prayer (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: “wing and prayer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wing_and_prayer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.