Word.ws English Dictionary

balloon goes up

Syllables: bal·loon goes upUK/bəˌluːn ɡəʊ̯z ˈʌp/US/bəˌlun ɡoʊ̯z ˈʌp/

balloon goes up phrase: something exciting, risky, or troublesome begins.

balloon goes up: something exciting, risky, or troublesome begins
Image: Hannes Grobe, Alfred Wegener, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Phrase

balloon goes up

  1. (idiomatic) Something exciting, risky, or troublesome begins.
    • — When is your job interview?
      — The balloon goes up at 10 tomorrow.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:balloon goes up.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see balloon, go, up.

Origin of balloon goes up

Probably from the releasing of a balloon as a signal for an event to begin, possibly popularized by the use of balloons by the British Army during World War I (1914–1918) as a signal for artillery fire to commence.

Questions about balloon goes up

What does balloon goes up mean?
Balloon goes up means something exciting, risky, or troublesome begins.
What part of speech is balloon goes up?
Balloon goes up is a phrase.
How do you pronounce balloon goes up?
Balloon goes up is pronounced /bəˌluːn ɡəʊ̯z ˈʌp/ (UK).

Words near balloon goes up in the dictionary

  1. balloon drops
  2. balloon flower
  3. balloon flowers
  4. balloon frame
  5. balloon frames
  6. balloon goes up
  7. balloon head
  8. balloon heads
  9. balloon juice
  10. balloon knot
  11. balloon knots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balloon goes up (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-balloon goes up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “balloon goes up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/balloon_goes_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.