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Sputnik moments

Sputnik moments is the plural of Sputnik moment.

Meaning of Sputnik moment

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...

Questions about Sputnik moments

What is Sputnik moments the plural of?
Sputnik moments is the plural of Sputnik moment.

Words near Sputnik moments in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Sputnik moments (page history and authors); 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.

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