Word.ws English Dictionary

stop the presses

stop the presses verb: an exclamation used to introduce especially new, important, surprising, or recent developments.

Verb

stop the presses (third-person singular simple present stops the presses, present participle stopping the presses, simple past and past participle stopped the presses)

  1. (idiomatic) An exclamation used to introduce especially new, important, surprising, or recent developments.

Forms of stop the presses

third-person singular presentstops the presses
present participlestopping the presses
past participlestopped the presses
paststopped the presses

Origin of stop the presses

Originally referred to delaying the printing of a newspaper in order to change its content to accommodate the inclusion of late-breaking news.

Questions about stop the presses

What does stop the presses mean?
Stop the presses means an exclamation used to introduce especially new, important, surprising, or recent developments.
What part of speech is stop the presses?
Stop the presses is a verb.
What is the past tense of stop the presses?
The past tense of stop the presses is stopped the presses.

Words near stop the presses in the dictionary

  1. stop streets
  2. stop the bleeding
  3. stop the car
  4. stop the job
  5. stop the lights
  6. stop the presses
  7. stop thief
  8. stop thrust
  9. stop thrusts
  10. stop to smell the roses
  11. stop traffic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stop the presses (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-stop the presses.ogg.

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