Word.ws English Dictionary

wuss out

wuss out verb: to fail to do something because of cowardice.

Verb

wuss out (third-person singular simple present wusses out, present participle wussing out, simple past and past participle wussed out)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To fail to do something because of cowardice.
    • He said he was going to climb that tree, but he wussed out at the last moment.
    Synonyms:
    chicken out

Synonyms of wuss out

Forms of wuss out

third-person singular presentwusses out
present participlewussing out
past participlewussed out
pastwussed out

Origin of wuss out

From wuss (“coward”).

Questions about wuss out

What does wuss out mean?
Wuss out means to fail to do something because of cowardice.
What part of speech is wuss out?
Wuss out is a verb.
What is the past tense of wuss out?
The past tense of wuss out is wussed out.

Words near wuss out in the dictionary

  1. wushu
  2. Wusi
  3. Wusih
  4. Wusong
  5. wuss
  6. wuss out
  7. wussed
  8. wussed out
  9. wusser
  10. wusses
  11. wusses out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wuss out (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-wuss out.ogg.

Cite this entry: “wuss out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wuss_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.