Meaning & use
lose your patience
Last updated
Meaning
phrasefixed phrase
To become annoyed or unable to stay calm because you have been waiting or dealing with something difficult.
Grammar: Takes a possessive pronoun: lose my patience, lose their patience.
Patterns
- lose your patience with someone
- lose patience with something
The teacher finally lost her patience with the noisy class.
I try not to lose my patience when I'm stuck in traffic.
He lost his patience after waiting for over an hour.
Common combinations
- lose patience with someone
- She lost patience with her slow computer.
- finally lose patience
- After many delays, they finally lost patience.
- quick to lose patience
- He is quick to lose patience in meetings.
Synonyms and how they differ
- get impatient
- Similar, but 'get impatient' can describe a general feeling, while 'lose your patience' suggests a specific moment of losing control.
- run out of patience
- Means the same but emphasizes that patience was used up gradually.
Opposites
Commonly confused: lose your patience or patients?
lose your patience vs patients
A common spelling mistake: 'patients' are people receiving medical care, while 'patience' is the ability to wait calmly.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'lose your patience' correctly?
Choose one answer.
Option 0 uses the correct possessive 'my' and the correct spelling 'patience'. Option 1 misspells it as 'patients', option 2 has wrong word order, and option 3 uses the wrong possessive.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “lose your patience”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.