Word.ws English Dictionary

greased the wheels

greased the wheels is the simple past and past participle of grease the wheels.

Meaning of grease the wheels

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

Questions about greased the wheels

What is greased the wheels the simple past and past participle of?
Greased the wheels is the simple past and past participle of grease the wheels.

Words near greased the wheels in the dictionary

  1. greased landings
  2. greased lightning
  3. greased one's gills
  4. greased someone's palm
  5. greased the skids
  6. greased the wheels
  7. greased up
  8. greasegrass
  9. greasehead
  10. greaseheads
  11. greasehorn

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: greased the wheels (page history and authors); 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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