show who's boss
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.47 in modern English
26
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To demonstrate that one is dominant over or superior to someone; to establish that one has control of some device or intractable object.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "When children are young, spanking is a familiar device to show who's boss."
- "Israeli soldiers . . . impose the curfews as collective punishment or as a means to head off violent protest, or simply to show who's boss."
- "So tomorrow a patriotic Russian hacker might just start breaking into private email servers of American companies and releasing their contents, just to show who’s boss."
- ""Bimeby I show yoh who's boss. I make yoh cry for Ramon be good to yoh!""
- "A typewriter once put me in such evil temper that I threw it out a second-floor window. . . . Replacing it cost $100 or so—a small price to pay for the pleasure of showing a machine who's boss."
- "[H]e decided to show Gates who's boss the only way he knew how—by whipping out his handcuffs and abusing his power to arrest."