Word.ws English Dictionary

greasing the wheels

greasing the wheels is the present participle and gerund 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 greasing the wheels

What is greasing the wheels the present participle and gerund of?
Greasing the wheels is the present participle and gerund of grease the wheels.

Words near greasing the wheels in the dictionary

  1. greasing
  2. greasing it on
  3. greasing one's gills
  4. greasing someone's palm
  5. greasing the skids
  6. greasing the wheels
  7. greasing up
  8. greasings
  9. Greasley
  10. greasy
  11. greasy kid's stuff

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: greasing 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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