Word.ws English Dictionary

Sputnik moment

Syllables: Sput·nik mo·mentUK/ˈspʊtnɪk ˈməʊmənt/US/ˈspʊtnɪk ˈmoʊmənt/

Sputnik moment noun: the moment when a country or a society realizes that it needs to catch up with apparent technological and scientific developments made by some other country or countries by increasing its investment into education, innovative research and development, etc.

sputnik moment: the moment when a country or a society realizes that it needs to catch up with apparent...
Image: NSSDC, NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Sputnik moment (plural Sputnik moments)

  1. The moment when a country or a society realizes that it needs to catch up with apparent technological and scientific developments made by some other country or countries by increasing its investment into education, innovative research and development, etc.
    • Immediately after September 11, 2001, Americans found themselves again facing a Sputnik moment. They realized that they were caught flat-footed, unprepared to confront Al Qaeda terrorists.2004 June 22, Rush Holt, Suggested Remarks for Rep. Rush Holt: Is American Security Being Lost in Translation?, National Language Conference, U.S. Department of Defence, archived from the original on...
    • Americans are having another Sputnik moment: one of those periodic alarms about some foreign technological and economic menace. It was the Soviets in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Germans and the Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, and now it's the Chinese and the Indians2005 May 25, Robert J. Samuelson, “Sputnik Scare, Updated”, in Washington Post

Examples of Sputnik moment in a sentence

  • This is our generation's Sputnik moment.2011 January 5, Barack Obama; Jon Favreau, speechwriter, “Remarks by the President in State of Union Address”, in White House Office of the...
  • "DeepSeek-R1 is AI's Sputnik moment," he posted to X on Sunday, referring to the satellite which kicked off the space race.2025 January 28, Lily Jamali, “China's DeepSeek AI shakes industry and dents America's swagger”, in BBC News Online, archived from the...

Forms of Sputnik moment

pluralSputnik moments

Origin of Sputnik moment

A reference to the Soviet Union's launch of the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 which caught the US unprepared. The event ignited the Space Race during the Cold War, and led to the US successfully launching Explorer 1 into space in 1958.

Questions about Sputnik moment

What does Sputnik moment mean?
Sputnik moment means the moment when a country or a society realizes that it needs to catch up with apparent technological and scientific developments made by some other country or countries by increasing its investment into education, innovative research and development, etc.
How do you use Sputnik moment in a sentence?
This is our generation's Sputnik moment.
What part of speech is Sputnik moment?
Sputnik moment is a noun.
How do you pronounce Sputnik moment?
Sputnik moment is pronounced /ˈspʊtnɪk ˈməʊmənt/ (UK).
What is the plural of Sputnik moment?
The plural of Sputnik moment is Sputnik moments.

Words near Sputnik moment in the dictionary

  1. sputation
  2. sputative
  3. sputcheon
  4. sputcheons
  5. sputnik
  6. Sputnik moment
  7. Sputnik moments
  8. Sputnik star
  9. Sputnik stars
  10. Sputnik V
  11. Sputnik weed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Sputnik moment (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-Sputnik moment.ogg.

Cite this entry: “Sputnik moment.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sputnik_moment. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.