MEANING
So worried, frustrated, or confused that you cannot think of what to do next.
Use it for
describing frustration after repeated unsuccessful attempts; showing someone no longer knowing how to respond; expressing distress rather than simple busyness; portraying the limits of a person’s patience or resourcefulnessNames distress or frustration so great that someone cannot see what to do next. Writing functions: Emotion / Not knowing what to do. Semantic categories (by meaning): Emotion / Not knowing what to do. Contexts: General conversation; Creative prose.
Words that belong together
- be at your wits’ end
- find someone at their wits’ end
On the page
After the fourth unexplained outage, the caretaker was at his wits’ end.
She sounded at her wits’ end, so I offered to help her list the remaining options.
Word forms
- Base
- at your wits’ end
Usage notes
Idiomatic prepositional phrase: be at one’s wits’ end. Wits is plural possessive, with the apostrophe after s. Change the possessive: at her wits’ end. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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