Word.ws English Dictionary

send it up the flagpole and see who salutes

send it up the flagpole and see who salutes is the alternative form of raise the flag and see who salutes.

Meaning of raise the flag and see who salutes

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 send it up the flagpole and see who salutes

third-person singular presentsends it up the flagpole and sees who salutes
present participlesending it up the flagpole and seeing who salutes
pastsent it up the flagpole and saw who saluted
past participlesent it up the flagpole and seen who saluted
alternative formsend it up the flagpole

Questions about send it up the flagpole and see who salutes

What is send it up the flagpole and see who salutes the alternative form of?
Send it up the flagpole and see who salutes is the alternative form of raise the flag and see who salutes.

Words near send it up the flagpole and see who salutes in the dictionary

  1. send for a toss
  2. send forth
  3. send her down Hughie
  4. send in
  5. send it
  6. send it up the flagpole and see who salutes
  7. send off
  8. send offs
  9. send on
  10. send one's apologies
  11. send out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: send it up the flagpole and see who salutes (page history and authors); 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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