entrust
Americanverb (used with object)
-
entrusts,
present (3rd person singular)
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entrusted,
past participle, past
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entrusting
present participle
verb
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(usually foll by with) to invest or charge (with a duty, responsibility, etc)
-
(often foll by to) to put into the care or protection of someone
Usage
It is usually considered incorrect to talk about entrusting someone to do something: the army cannot be trusted (not entrusted ) to carry out orders
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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entrustsimple
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entrustssimple
-
have entrustedperfect
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has entrustedperfect
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am entrustingprogressive
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are entrustingprogressive
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is entrustingprogressive
-
have been entrustingperfect progressive
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has been entrustingperfect progressive
Past
-
entrustedsimple
-
had entrustedperfect
-
was entrustingprogressive
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were entrustingprogressive
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had been entrustingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of entrust
Explanation
To entrust is to give someone a responsibility you assume she will fulfill. If you entrust someone with the task of getting you to school on time, make sure she’s punctual. To entrust is to let someone take care of something for you because you believe she will protect it. It could be a duty or a thing — you might entrust a nursing home with the care of your parents or entrust an accountant with your finances. Entrust is a verb that needs an object, so you always entrust with or to something. If a friend entrusts you with a secret, she trusts you not to tell.
Vocabulary lists containing entrust
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In reliance on that agreement, the parents entrust the surrogate with their embryo, which contains their own genetic material.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
Salcido is among a small but growing number of business owners in the US said to be choosing to entrust their ventures to employees, rather than sell to an outside buyer.
From BBC ● Jun. 14, 2026
Murrin’s case highlights pitfalls that lurk when people entrust someone with their taxes, according to Olson.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 27, 2026
Major investors and tenants also remain reluctant to entrust multibillion-dollar decisions to unproven platforms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 23, 2026
But out of the thousands of them where was there one to whom he could entrust the mission and then take ease?
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
It added: "Leadership in football is not a possession. It is not about holding - or demanding - power to be held. It is a duty of service to the football family that entrusts it."
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
Constitution entrusts Congress with the power to “declare war.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 3, 2026
Pope Francis entrusts all of us with this task.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2025
Our legal system entrusts trial judges with a wide swath of discretionary decisions in ruling on evidence, framing jury instructions, and controlling other facets of the cases they try, with barely any appellate supervision.
From Slate ● Jan. 16, 2024
"He entrusts some small matters to us, to lighten his load."
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
Nun-novice and anti-gun violence activist Nanette, 35, has been carrying her mother’s secret for five years, not knowing whether one or both of her sisters had been entrusted with it too.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
But whether “Catholic doctrine requires, permits, or disfavors a particular exemption is a religious question entrusted to Catholic authorities, not state officials.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 31, 2026
His videos drew dozens of aspiring food truck owners, many of them immigrants like Ochoa, who entrusted him with their life savings in hopes of turning their dreams into a livelihood.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2026
Posting on social media, he urged citizens to "remain peaceful, patient and patriotic as we await the official outcome from those entrusted with managing the vote".
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Once he returned with six policemen armed with rifles to whom he entrusted the maintenance of order, and no one remembered the original agreement not to have armed men in the town.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Barcelona thanked Jorge "for his commitment to our club, for entrusting us with the beginnings and the most glorious years of his son Leo's football career".
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026
Amazon has suffered a spate of outages, some of them lasting hours, since it began entrusting more software coding responsibilities to AI bots while laying off human engineers, according to the Financial Times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2026
As these concerns mount, few in the industry have addressed the character of their AI models in quite the same way as 5-year-old Anthropic: by entrusting a single person with so much of the task.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 9, 2026
He flies around Texas in a private jet, but it belongs to the much wealthier people entrusting him to handle their business.
From Salon ● Nov. 16, 2025
It becomes a compulsory act on the one who knows to ensure that this entrusting does not occur.
From "Saints and Misfits" by S.K. Ali
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
