Word.ws English Dictionary

Mexican overdrive

Mexican overdrive noun: synonym of angel gear.

Noun

Mexican overdrive (uncountable)

  1. (US, slang) Synonym of angel gear.
    • He shifted his car out of gear, at the top of the hill, and coasted down in Mexican overdrive.
    Synonyms:
    angel gear

Synonyms of Mexican overdrive

Origin of Mexican overdrive

Synchronically, coordinate with other variants of overdrive in this sense of the word, whereas some of the variants certainly denigrate outgroups (e.g., Jewish overdrive, Polish overdrive) and others might not be denigrating but rather celebratory (e.g., Georgia overdrive); diachronically, this one has been said to be based on NASCAR teams' experience in the early 1950s in the legendary Carerra Panamerica, where the long hills would have otherwise overrevved the engines, although this may be a folk etymology for just another outgroup-denigrating variant.

Questions about Mexican overdrive

What does Mexican overdrive mean?
Mexican overdrive means synonym of angel gear.
What part of speech is Mexican overdrive?
Mexican overdrive is a noun.

Words near Mexican overdrive in the dictionary

  1. Mexican noodles
  2. Mexican orange
  3. Mexican oranges
  4. Mexican oregano
  5. Mexican oreganos
  6. Mexican overdrive
  7. Mexican paintbrush
  8. Mexican persimmon
  9. Mexican pewter
  10. Mexican pink
  11. Mexican Plateau

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mexican overdrive (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: En-au-Mexican overdrive.ogg.

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