Word.ws English Dictionary

false start

false start noun: the act of an athlete starting a race before being signaled to do so.

Noun

false start (plural false starts)

  1. The act of an athlete starting a race before being signaled to do so.
    Synonyms:
    jump-start, flyer
  2. The act of an offensive player moving across the line of scrimmage prior to the snap.
  3. An attempt at something that does not work, requiring one to start over.
    • After a "false start" that was too vigorous, overloading the motors, No. D171 made a very successful unassisted run from Tyne Dock to Consett.1962 December, “Motive Power Miscellany: North Eastern Region”, in Modern Railways, page 422
    • He spent nearly 20 years developing the movie, keeping at it through false starts and heartbreaking dead ends. And when he got the chance to make it, he went all in, devising entire societies full of baroquely souped-up death machines and screaming war-cults.2017 December 1, Tom Breihan, “Mad Max: Fury Road might already be the best action movie ever made”, in The Onion AV Club, archived from the original on 06 Jan 2018

Synonyms of false start

Forms of false start

pluralfalse starts

Questions about false start

What does false start mean?
False start means the act of an athlete starting a race before being signaled to do so.
What part of speech is false start?
False start is a noun.
What is the plural of false start?
The plural of false start is false starts.

Words near false start in the dictionary

  1. false sharing
  2. false shower
  3. false showers
  4. false signal
  5. false signals
  6. false start
  7. false starts
  8. false step
  9. false steps
  10. false strawberries
  11. false strawberry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false start (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.

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Cite this entry: “false start.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/false_start. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.