Word.ws English Dictionary

add oil

add oil verb: synonym of let's go: a cheer of encouragement, support, etc.

Verb

add oil (third-person singular simple present adds oil, present participle adding oil, simple past and past participle added oil)

  1. (China, Hong-Kong, idiomatic) Synonym of let's go: a cheer of encouragement, support, etc.
    Synonyms:
    let's go

Synonyms of add oil

Forms of add oil

third-person singular presentadds oil
present participleadding oil
past participleadded oil
pastadded oil

Origin of add oil

Calque of Chinese 加油 (jiāyóu), particularly in Hong Kong contexts via its Cantonese pronunciation gaa1 jau4-2, sometimes credited to shouts of support during the Macau Grand Prix. Compare cooking with gas, gas up, fuel up, etc.

Questions about add oil

What does add oil mean?
Add oil means synonym of let's go: a cheer of encouragement, support, etc.
What part of speech is add oil?
Add oil is a verb.
What is the past tense of add oil?
The past tense of add oil is added oil.

Words near add oil in the dictionary

  1. add fuel to fire
  2. add fuel to the fire
  3. add fuel to the flame
  4. add in quadrature
  5. add insult to injury
  6. add oil
  7. add on
  8. add one's twopenn'orth
  9. add ons
  10. add salt to injury
  11. add to the list

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: add oil (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-add oil.ogg.

Cite this entry: “add oil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/add_oil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.