Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

fire the starting gun

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.61 in modern English

Syllables: fire the s-tart-ing -gun
IPA

26

Scrabble Score

18

Letters

4

Syllables

11

Unique Chars

Meaning

verb

To launch or trigger an event or situation.

Example Sentences

"The TV and radio star Noel Edmonds, who is expected to join ITV’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here jungle camp this week, is also likely to fire the starting gun on a £60m lawsuit against Lloyds Bank."
"Halks-Miller’s discovery fired the starting gun on the race to develop a diagnostic blood test. Illumina spun off a new company, Grail, to develop the test, raising more than $2bn from investors including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and the Chinese company Tencent."

Inflected Forms

fires the starting gun (present, singular) firing the starting gun (participle, present) fired the starting gun (participle, past) fired the starting gun (past)

Phrases

jump-start jump the gun kick off kick-start

Frequently Paired Words

jump-start jump the gun kick off kick-start

Questions

What does fire the starting gun mean?: To launch or trigger an event or situation.

How to pronounce fire the starting gun

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