Word.ws English Dictionary

head of steam

head of steam noun: a significant amount of energy, vigour or momentum, sufficient to make progress or succeed in a task.

Noun

head of steam (plural heads of steam)

  1. (idiomatic) A significant amount of energy, vigour or momentum, sufficient to make progress or succeed in a task.
    • "They were keeping a full head of steam, and a profound rumbling, as of an empty furniture van trotting over a bridge, made a sustained bass to all the other noises of the place."1919, Joseph Conrad, Typhoon
    • Soon after passing the site of Stretfordbridge Junction Edwards opened out to 25 per cent; boiler pressure was still full up, and Taylor was spreading what was left of the fire so as to arrive in Shrewsbury with only a light head of steam.1945 September and October, O. S. Nock, “Wartime Locomotive Working on the G.W.R.—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 255
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see head, steam.

Examples of head of steam in a sentence

  • [literal sense] Caffiers and Boulogne were passed with a full boiler and a full head of steam, and going up Neufchâtel I couldn't stop her blowing off.1961 March, "Dalmore", “Driving and firing modern French steam steam locomotives”, in Trains Illustrated, page 150:
  • Arsenal were starting to work up a head of steam and Tractor Boys boss Paul Jewell cut an increasingly frustrated figure on the touchline.2011 January 25, Paul Fletcher, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Ipswich (agg 3 - 1)”, in BBC:
  • [literal sense] The film is really about the driver taking control of his charge... the fireman creating a fine head of steam... the signalman keeping the traffic moving safely... [...].2021 March 10, Greg Morse, “Telling the railway's story on film”, in RAIL, number 926, page 43:

Forms of head of steam

pluralheads of steam

Origin of head of steam

The figurative sense is by metaphor from the literal one: the need of the boiler of a steam locomotive to exceed a minimum amount of pressure before the locomotive could start moving.

Questions about head of steam

What does head of steam mean?
Head of steam means a significant amount of energy, vigour or momentum, sufficient to make progress or succeed in a task.
How do you use head of steam in a sentence?
[literal sense] Caffiers and Boulogne were passed with a full boiler and a full head of steam, and going up Neufchâtel I couldn't stop her blowing off.
What part of speech is head of steam?
Head of steam is a noun.
What is the plural of head of steam?
The plural of head of steam is heads of steam.

Words near head of steam in the dictionary

  1. head of government
  2. head of hair
  3. head of household
  4. head of navigation
  5. head of state
  6. head of steam
  7. head of the table
  8. Head of the Tide
  9. head off
  10. head off at the pass
  11. head office

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: head of steam (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-head of steam.ogg.

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