Word.ws English Dictionary

moonshiner's turn

moonshiner's turn noun: a rapid illegal U-turn performed by putting the car in neutral and applying the hand brake, thereby producing a controlled skid, with the car still moving backwards when forward power is again applied.

Noun

moonshiner's turn (plural moonshiners' turns)

  1. (US, colloquial) A rapid illegal U-turn performed by putting the car in neutral and applying the hand brake, thereby producing a controlled skid, with the car still moving backwards when forward power is again applied.
    • Did you see the moonshiner’s turn he pulled in that chase scene?
    • One sure way to cause an accident is with your basic "moonshiner's" or "bootlegger's" turn. Whiz down the road at about sixty or seventy, throw the gearshift into neutral, cut the wheel to the left, and hit the emergency brake with one good wallop while holding the brake release out with your left...1979 March, P. J. O'Rourke, “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink”, in National Lampoon, archived from the original on 12 Jan 2003

Synonyms of moonshiner's turn

Forms of moonshiner's turn

pluralmoonshiners' turns

Origin of moonshiner's turn

Used by moonshiners to evade authorities during Prohibition.

Questions about moonshiner's turn

What does moonshiner's turn mean?
Moonshiner's turn means a rapid illegal U-turn performed by putting the car in neutral and applying the hand brake, thereby producing a controlled skid, with the car still moving backwards when forward power is again applied.
What part of speech is moonshiner's turn?
Moonshiner's turn is a noun.
What is the plural of moonshiner's turn?
The plural of moonshiner's turn is moonshiners' turns.

Words near moonshiner's turn in the dictionary

  1. moonshi
  2. moonshine
  3. moonshine pudding
  4. moonshined
  5. moonshiner
  6. moonshiner's turn
  7. moonshiners
  8. moonshiners' turns
  9. moonshines
  10. moonshiney
  11. moonshining

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: moonshiner's turn (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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