Word.ws English Dictionary

write one's own ticket

write one's own ticket verb: to be empowered to choose whichever job, financial arrangement, or course of action one desires.

Verb

write one's own ticket (third-person singular simple present writes one's own ticket, present participle writing one's own ticket, simple past wrote one's own ticket, past participle written one's own ticket)

  1. (idiomatic) To be empowered to choose whichever job, financial arrangement, or course of action one desires.
    • Mr. DeChadenedes said that any one wishing to back the Republican candidate could write his own ticket and name his own price.1925 November 3, “Offers of 15 to 1 on Walker Go Begging”, in New York Times, page 2
    • Parker figured that in the interim, the record companies would sell out their stock of Elvis' recordings, and that the King could write his own ticket when he returned, in both the recording and the film industries. Parker was right.2002 August 12, Lee Siegel, “Long Live the King”, in Time

Forms of write one's own ticket

third-person singular presentwrites one's own ticket
present participlewriting one's own ticket
pastwrote one's own ticket
past participlewritten one's own ticket
alternative formwrite one's ticket

Questions about write one's own ticket

What does write one's own ticket mean?
Write one's own ticket means to be empowered to choose whichever job, financial arrangement, or course of action one desires.
What part of speech is write one's own ticket?
Write one's own ticket is a verb.
What is the past tense of write one's own ticket?
The past tense of write one's own ticket is wrote one's own ticket.

Words near write one's own ticket in the dictionary

  1. write in
  2. write itself
  3. write off
  4. write once
  5. write once, read many
  6. write one's own ticket
  7. write oneself into a corner
  8. write out
  9. write over
  10. write the book
  11. write up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: write one's own ticket (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-write one's own ticket.ogg.

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