Idiom
balloon goes up
Meaning
Something exciting, risky, or troublesome begins.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Everyone gets nervous when the balloon goes up.”
“We have finished the preparations, so we must be ready for when the balloon goes up tomorrow morning.”
“The tension in the room was palpable as the team waited for the balloon to go up and the consequences of their risky plan to unfold.”
Examples
simple
“Everyone gets nervous when the balloon goes up.”
contextual
“We have finished the preparations, so we must be ready for when the balloon goes up tomorrow morning.”
complex
“The tension in the room was palpable as the team waited for the balloon to go up and the consequences of their risky plan to unfold.”
Origin
Probably from the releasing of a balloon as a signal for an event to begin, possibly popularized by the use of balloons by the British Army during World War I (1914–1918) as a signal for artillery fire to commence.
Key words
Related idioms
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