Word.ws English Dictionary

greenlight

/ˈɡɹiːnlaɪt/

greenlight verb: to approve; to permit to proceed.

Verb

greenlight (third-person singular simple present greenlights, present participle greenlighting, simple past and past participle greenlighted or greenlit)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, transitive) To approve; to permit to proceed.
    • Labour's Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds hit back at Sunak and said that his failure to greenlight major projects such as Northern Powerhouse Rail showed that government claims of levelling up the country were "not supported by the evidence".2020 December 2, Paul Stephen, “Network News: Sunak focuses on jobs, infrastructure and 'levelling up'”, in Rail, page 7
    • The United Kingdom (UK) is reportedly waiting for US approval before greenlighting Ukrainian forces to use UK-provided Storm Shadow missiles for long-range strikes against military targets in Russia.2024 August 11, Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Davit Gasparyan, Frederick W. Kagan, “Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 17, 2024”, in Ukraine Project, The...
    Synonyms:
    allow, approve, give the go-ahead, give the green light, permit, rubber stamp, wave through
  2. (idiomatic, slang, transitive) To approve or requisition the harming or death of; to put a hit out on.

Synonyms of greenlight

Antonyms

Forms of greenlight

third-person singular presentgreenlights
present participlegreenlighting
past participlegreenlighted
pastgreenlighted
past participlegreenlit
pastgreenlit
alternative formgreen-light

Origin of greenlight

From green light.

Words formed from greenlight

Questions about greenlight

What does greenlight mean?
Greenlight means to approve; to permit to proceed.
What part of speech is greenlight?
Greenlight is a verb.
How do you pronounce greenlight?
Greenlight is pronounced /ˈɡɹiːnlaɪt/.
What is the past tense of greenlight?
The past tense of greenlight is greenlighted.

Words near greenlight in the dictionary

  1. greenless
  2. greenlet
  3. greenlets
  4. Greenley
  5. Greenleys
  6. greenlight
  7. greenlighted
  8. greenlighter
  9. greenlighters
  10. greenlighting
  11. greenlights

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: greenlight (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-greenlight.wav.

Cite this entry: “greenlight.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/greenlight. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.