Word.ws English Dictionary

raise the flag and see who salutes

raise the flag and see who salutes verb: to float an idea, (or otherwise do some action) to see what response or controversy it generates, usually as a preliminary step.

Verb

raise the flag and see who salutes (third-person singular simple present raises the flag and sees who salutes, present participle raising the flag and seeing who salutes, simple past raised the flag and saw who saluted, past participle raised the flag and seen who saluted)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To float an idea, (or otherwise do some action) to see what response or controversy it generates, usually as a preliminary step.
    • Much of the discourse on and the spirit of group interaction have an improvisational flavor: we “float trial balloons” in the groups we belong to or “raise a flag and see who salutes.”1996, Jo Ann Oravec, Virtual individuals, virtual groups: Human Dimensions of Groupware and Computer Networking, page 312

Forms of raise the flag and see who salutes

third-person singular presentraises the flag and sees who salutes
present participleraising the flag and seeing who salutes
pastraised the flag and saw who saluted
past participleraised the flag and seen who saluted
alternative formsend it up the flagpole and see who salutes
alternative formsend it up the flagpole

Questions about raise the flag and see who salutes

What does raise the flag and see who salutes mean?
Raise the flag and see who salutes means to float an idea, (or otherwise do some action) to see what response or controversy it generates, usually as a preliminary step.
What part of speech is raise the flag and see who salutes?
Raise the flag and see who salutes is a verb.
What is the past tense of raise the flag and see who salutes?
The past tense of raise the flag and see who salutes is raised the flag and saw who saluted.

Words near raise the flag and see who salutes in the dictionary

  1. raise the alarm
  2. raise the ante
  3. raise the bar
  4. raise the dead
  5. raise the devil
  6. raise the flag and see who salutes
  7. raise the line
  8. raise the roof
  9. raise the specter
  10. raise the spectre
  11. raise the stakes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: raise the flag and see who salutes (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-raise the flag and see who salutes.ogg.

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