To lay bets (recorded in a pocketbook) against the success of every horse, so that the bookmaker wins on all the unsuccessful horses and loses only on the winning horse or horses.

make a break for itverb

To attempt to escape; to flee; to run away.

make a cat laughverb

To be extremely funny.

make a clean breastverb

Often followed by of: to be honest about something; to confess.

make a decisionverb

To decide.

make a dentverb

To make an impression; to have an effect on; to chip away at.

make a differenceverb

To carry out an action, the result of which is a significant change, or an altered circumstance.

make a faceverb

To make a facial expression, often for humor, as a taunt, or to indicate distaste.

make a fist ofverb

To do (something) reasonably successfully.

make a fool out ofverb

Alternative form of make a fool of.

make a go ofverb

To succeed in (something); especially, to succeed in making a living.

make a hash ofverb

to do badly, particularly to make a mess while doing.

make a killingverb

To win or earn a large amount of money.

make a legverb

To make a deep bow with the right leg drawn back.

make a livingverb

To earn enough income to support oneself and, if applicable, one's family.

make a meal ofverb

To spend more time and energy on some task than it warrants; to make something overly complicated; to make a big thing out of.

make a mockery ofverb

To mock; to ridicule or imitate, often to express contempt.

make a monkey out ofverb

To cause a person, group, or action to appear foolish or inferior; to subject someone or something to ridicule.

make a mountain out of a molehillverb

To treat a problem as greater than it is; to blow something out of proportion; to exaggerate the importance of something trivial.

make a moveverb

To take action.

make a passverb

To unambiguously indicate interest in romantic or sexual involvement to someone the speaker has not previously been sexually involved with.

make a pig of oneselfverb

To eat to excess; to overeat; to gorge.

make a pig out of oneselfverb

Alternative form of make a pig of oneself.

make a pig's ear ofverb

To do badly; to make a mess of.

make a pointverb

To argue or promote an idea.

make a rabbit bite a bulldogphrase

Said of very strong or plentiful alcoholic drink.

make a run for itverb

To attempt to escape; to flee; to run away.

make a sceneverb

To bring unnecessary attention to oneself, especially through a public expression of tumultuous emotion.

make a show of oneselfverb

To embarrass oneself or others in public.

make a silk purse of a sow's earverb

To produce something refined, admirable, or valuable from something which is unrefined, unpleasant, or of little or no value.

make a spectacle of oneselfverb

To conspicuously embarrass oneself or others in public.

make a standverb

Alternative form of take a stand.

make a statementverb

To implicitly communicate an idea, often through one's fashion choices.

make a stick for one's own backverb

To make a decision that will have personally adverse consequences.

make a stinkverb

To complain; to demand attention or remedy for a problem.

make a virtue of necessityverb

To make the best of a difficult situation; to recast or portray an action or situation in which one has no alternatives as an action or situation which was deliberately chosen on its merits.

make againstverb

To be unfavourable to; to work against.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English alphabetical index for the letter M contains 36,575 headwords drawn from our Wiktionary-derived dictionary table. At 50 entries per page the browse splits into 732 pages, and you are currently viewing page 62. Every row above is a dictionary-backed entry with a canonical slug, and each links through to a full definition page with pronunciation, senses, etymology, and related-word data where available.

On this page 50 of 50 entries carry a part-of-speech tag and 50 carry at least one stored definition. Coverage varies across letters because Wiktionary volunteers build entries at different speeds for different parts of the alphabet, letters with common starting sounds (S, C, T, P) usually have the densest coverage, while less frequent starters (X, Q, Z) tend to have shorter but more specialised lists. PlainSpell surfaces whatever data is present and links back to the source when a definition is not yet recorded.

For readers using this index as a spelling reference, the guarantee is that every form you see on the list is a documented English headword, not a guess, not a derived inflection lacking a lemma row. If a word you expected to find is absent from the "M" list, it usually means the form exists only as an inflection of another lemma (e.g. a past participle stored under the infinitive) or the entry has not yet been imported from Wiktionary. Use the search bar or the misspelling lookup to resolve these cases.