beat the pants off

beat the pants off

English

Alternative forms

• lick the pants off
• whip the pants off

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Verb

beat the pants off (third-person singular simple present beats the pants off, present participle beating the pants off, simple past beat the pants off, past participle beaten the pants off or beat the pants off)

1. (transitive, idiomatic) To thoroughly and decisively defeat someone, either in a physical fight or, figuratively, in a competition.
   • 1987 Sept. 6, Bernard Weinraub, "Reagan Tells Congress to Shun Protectionism," New York Times (retrieved 16 Aug 2012):

     American workers can outcompete and beat the pants off anybody, anywhere.

   • 2001 June 24, Janice Castro, "Business," Time:

     Their counterparts in Canada, Europe and Japan made less than half as much, sometimes while beating the pants off them in the marketplace.

Synonyms

• beat the daylights out of
• beat the piss out of
• beat the shit out of
• beat the snot out of
• beat the stuffing out of
• beat the tar out of
• clobber
• knock the living daylights out of
• lick
• lower the boom on

References

• beat the pants off at OneLook Dictionary Search