Word.ws English Dictionary

hitting the fan

hitting the fan is the present participle and gerund of hit the fan.

Meaning of hit the fan

Verb

hit the fan (third-person singular simple present hits the fan, present participle hitting the fan, simple past and past participle hit the fan)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To have a dramatic, usually negative, effect.
    • They were just clowning around, when suddenly it all hit the fan.

Questions about hitting the fan

What is hitting the fan the present participle and gerund of?
Hitting the fan is the present participle and gerund of hit the fan.

Words near hitting the fan in the dictionary

  1. hitting the buffers
  2. hitting the button
  3. hitting the ceiling
  4. hitting the deck
  5. hitting the dirt
  6. hitting the fan
  7. hitting the floor
  8. hitting the gas
  9. hitting the gold
  10. hitting the ground running
  11. hitting the gym

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hitting the fan (page history and authors); hit the fan (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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Cite this entry: “hitting the fan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hitting_the_fan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.