Word.ws English Dictionary

grease the wheels

grease the wheels verb: to create conditions likely to produce or hasten favorable future developments.

Verb

grease the wheels (third-person singular simple present greases the wheels, present participle greasing the wheels, simple past and past participle greased the wheels)

  1. (idiomatic) To create conditions likely to produce or hasten favorable future developments.
    • Once a way of greasing the wheels of a gruesome bureaucracy, bribery has now become part of the cost of doing business.1992 March 14, Celestine Bohlen, “Corruption Grows Greedy in Russia”, in New York Times, retrieved 18 May 2014
    • [T]he banks will feel more comfortable about lending to each other, which is something we desperately need to help grease the wheels of the economy.2008 July 5, Mark Dampier, “The Analyst: Why it's time to get back into bonds”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 18 May 2014

Synonyms of grease the wheels

Forms of grease the wheels

third-person singular presentgreases the wheels
present participlegreasing the wheels
past participlegreased the wheels
pastgreased the wheels

Origin of grease the wheels

By a metaphor in which facilitating human socioeconomic interaction, or any other process or system, is portrayed as lubricating machinery; in this regard, compare also lubrication payment and social lubricant.

Questions about grease the wheels

What does grease the wheels mean?
Grease the wheels means to create conditions likely to produce or hasten favorable future developments.
What part of speech is grease the wheels?
Grease the wheels is a verb.
What is the past tense of grease the wheels?
The past tense of grease the wheels is greased the wheels.

Words near grease the wheels in the dictionary

  1. grease pots
  2. grease someone's palm
  3. grease spot
  4. grease spots
  5. grease the skids
  6. grease the wheels
  7. grease up
  8. grease-monkey
  9. grease-monkeys
  10. grease-paint
  11. grease-painted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grease the wheels (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-grease the wheels.ogg.

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