Word.ws English Dictionary

gain momentum

gain momentum verb: to increase something's own speed while being acted on by gravity.

Verb

gain momentum (third-person singular simple present gains momentum, present participle gaining momentum, simple past and past participle gained momentum)

  1. (literally) To increase something's own speed while being acted on by gravity.
  2. (idiomatic) Synonym of gain ground (to further the progress of; to obtain an advantage)
    Synonyms:
    gain ground
  3. (idiomatic) To become popular among a large amount of people; to have many people participate in a trend or social movement.
    • The pilgrimage has gained momentum!1983 April 12, “Pilgrimage”, in Murmur, performed by R.E.M.

Synonyms of gain momentum

Forms of gain momentum

third-person singular presentgains momentum
present participlegaining momentum
past participlegained momentum
pastgained momentum

Questions about gain momentum

What does gain momentum mean?
Gain momentum means to increase something's own speed while being acted on by gravity.
What part of speech is gain momentum?
Gain momentum is a verb.
What is the past tense of gain momentum?
The past tense of gain momentum is gained momentum.

Words near gain momentum in the dictionary

  1. Gaimster
  2. gain
  3. gain ground
  4. gain line
  5. gain lines
  6. gain momentum
  7. gain of function
  8. gain on
  9. gain one's spurs
  10. gain over
  11. gain steam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gain momentum (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: “gain momentum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gain_momentum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.