Word.ws English Dictionary

go through the gears

go through the gears verb: to gain momentum; to get up to speed.

Verb

go through the gears (third-person singular simple present goes through the gears, present participle going through the gears, simple past went through the gears, past participle gone through the gears)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To gain momentum; to get up to speed.
    • The visitors kept out their opponents for 33 minutes with some determined defending but City always looked capable of going through the gears and they opened the scoring when Foden drove home from inside the box after Alvarez's shot was blocked.2024 January 7, Gary Rose, “Manchester City 5-0 Huddersfield Town”, in BBC Sport

Forms of go through the gears

third-person singular presentgoes through the gears
present participlegoing through the gears
pastwent through the gears
past participlegone through the gears

Questions about go through the gears

What does go through the gears mean?
Go through the gears means to gain momentum; to get up to speed.
What part of speech is go through the gears?
Go through the gears is a verb.
What is the past tense of go through the gears?
The past tense of go through the gears is went through the gears.

Words near go through the gears in the dictionary

  1. go through fire and water
  2. go through great lengths
  3. go through hell
  4. go through hoops
  5. go through the attitudes
  6. go through the gears
  7. go through the mill
  8. go through the motions
  9. go through the trouble
  10. go through with
  11. go to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go through the gears (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: “go through the gears.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_through_the_gears. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.