follow suit
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To do the same as others have done
Literally: imitate the action of the suit in card games
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Turberville claimed to have reached agreement with the recently defeated Morgan of Wales [q.v.]that he should rebel again if the Scots would follow suit.
That year Nestlé — which accounts for a tenth of the Swiss stockmarket — opened its register to overseas investors, and a number of other companies have followed suit.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “follow suit” mean?
To do the same as others have done Literally: imitate the action of the suit in card games
Is “follow suit” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.