Idiom
fourth gear
Meaning
A maximal level of effort.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He finally shifted into fourth gear to finish his work.”
“You need to find fourth gear if you want to pass this exam.”
“She stays in fourth gear until every task on her list is done.”
“With the deadline only an hour away, the team shifted into fourth gear to complete the project.”
“The kitchen staff hit fourth gear as the restaurant suddenly filled with hungry customers during the lunch rush.”
“After a slow start to the morning, I finally reached fourth gear and cleaned the entire house before noon.”
“The charity workers moved into fourth gear to organize all the donations before the storm arrived.”
“Recognizing that the competition was closing the gap, the athlete shifted into fourth gear and sprinted toward the finish line.”
Examples
simple
“He finally shifted into fourth gear to finish his work.”
“You need to find fourth gear if you want to pass this exam.”
“She stays in fourth gear until every task on her list is done.”
contextual
“With the deadline only an hour away, the team shifted into fourth gear to complete the project.”
“The kitchen staff hit fourth gear as the restaurant suddenly filled with hungry customers during the lunch rush.”
“After a slow start to the morning, I finally reached fourth gear and cleaned the entire house before noon.”
“The charity workers moved into fourth gear to organize all the donations before the storm arrived.”
complex
“Recognizing that the competition was closing the gap, the athlete shifted into fourth gear and sprinted toward the finish line.”
Origin
The figurative sense arises from a period in automotive history when fourth gear represented the highest speed a vehicle could achieve. It is a mechanical superlative, parallel to the French expression *en quatrième vitesse*, denoting the final stage of acceleration before a car reached its limit.
Key words
Related idioms
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