walk the talk

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

To act in accordance with one's words or principles

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

hành động phù hợp với lời nói hoặc nguyên tắc

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to walk as one talks
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The reason why many language learners never become fluent is that they talk the walk more than they walk the talk.

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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “walk the talk” mean?

To act in accordance with one's words or principles Literally: to walk as one talks

Is “walk the talk” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.