Word.ws English Dictionary

in high gear

in high gear prepositional phrase: serious and intense.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Serious and intense.
    • The show goes in high gear when Bill is on screen.

Questions about in high gear

What does in high gear mean?
In high gear means serious and intense.
What part of speech is in high gear?
In high gear is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in high gear in the dictionary

  1. in hell
  2. in hell's name
  3. in hiding
  4. in high dudgeon
  5. in high feather
  6. in high gear
  7. in hindsight
  8. in hock
  9. in honor of
  10. in honour of
  11. in hospital

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in high gear (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-in high gear.ogg.

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