Word.ws English Dictionary

under the wire

under the wire prepositional phrase: across the finish line.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Across the finish line.
    • Lying forward flattened along Sunfish's hard-muscled shoulders, Bud was gaining and gaining—one length, then two lengths as he shot under the wire, slowed and rode back to find a silent crowd watching him.1921, B. M. Bower, chapter 15, in Cow-Country
  2. (idiomatic) At the last minute; before the deadline; barely on time; nearly late.
    • Russians had heard rumors, and foreign correspondents had obtained confirmation, that the Dictator will soon drastically tighten up proverbially loose Bolshevik divorce laws. In a panic to get in under the wire, every Moscow mate who has recently thought of divorce was last week jamming the...1935 July 15, “Zags Jammed”, in TIME, archived from the original on 22 Dec 2011

Synonyms of under the wire

Questions about under the wire

What does under the wire mean?
Under the wire means across the finish line.
What part of speech is under the wire?
Under the wire is a prepositional phrase.

Words near under the wire in the dictionary

  1. under the stars
  2. under the sun
  3. under the surface
  4. under the table
  5. under the weather
  6. under the wire
  7. under the yoke
  8. under tow
  9. under water
  10. under way
  11. under weigh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under the wire (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-under the wire.ogg.

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