Word.ws English Dictionary

move through the gears

move through the gears verb: to gradually increase speed or output.

Verb

move through the gears (third-person singular simple present moves through the gears, present participle moving through the gears, simple past and past participle moved through the gears)

  1. (idiomatic) To gradually increase speed or output.
    • Spain failed to move through the gears despite exerting control for lengthy spells and a measure of perspective must be applied immediately to the outcome.2011 November 12, “International friendly: England 1-0 Spain”, in BBC Sport

Forms of move through the gears

third-person singular presentmoves through the gears
present participlemoving through the gears
past participlemoved through the gears
pastmoved through the gears

Questions about move through the gears

What does move through the gears mean?
Move through the gears means to gradually increase speed or output.
What part of speech is move through the gears?
Move through the gears is a verb.
What is the past tense of move through the gears?
The past tense of move through the gears is moved through the gears.

Words near move through the gears in the dictionary

  1. move the goal posts
  2. move the goalposts
  3. move the needle
  4. move the problem
  5. move the yardsticks
  6. move through the gears
  7. move to
  8. move together
  9. move up
  10. move up in the world
  11. move with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: move through the gears (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-move through the gears.ogg.

Cite this entry: “move through the gears.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/move_through_the_gears. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.