Meaning & use
girded loins
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Meaning
phraseidiomliteraryhumorous
Prepared and ready to face a challenge, in the phrase to gird your loins.
Grammar: Used with a possessive: she girded her loins.
Patterns
- gird your loins
- with girded loins
With girded loins, the volunteers began the clean-up.
He girded his loins and walked into the interview.
After lunch we girded our loins and tackled the paperwork.
Common combinations
- gird your loins
- Gird your loins; tomorrow is a very busy day.
- gird his loins
- He girded his loins for the argument.
- girded their loins
- The students girded their loins before the exams.
- gird up your loins
- Gird up your loins and start packing.
Synonyms and how they differ
- brace yourself
- Brace yourself is plainer and more usual in modern speech than the old-fashioned girded loins.
- get ready
- Get ready is neutral, while girded loins adds a sense of grim, serious preparation.
- steel yourself
- Steel yourself focuses on the emotional courage, not just practical preparation.
Word family
Commonly confused: girded loins or gird your loins?
girded loins vs gird your loins
This is the present-tense form of the idiom; girded loins is the past-tense or descriptive form.
Practice
Which meaning best fits 'The team girded their loins before the big match'?
Choose one answer.
Girding your loins is an idiom for getting ready for something hard. The belt reading is the literal origin but not the modern meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “girded loins”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.