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fourth gear

noun

Etymology

The figurative sense reflects that in some times and places, fourth gear was the highest gear that a car could achieve; compare French en quatrième vitesse.

  1. derived from en quatrième vitesse

Definitions

  1. The fourth of the available gears in a transmission or other gearbox.

  2. A maximal level of effort.

    • During the seventies, Shashi Kapoor went into fourth gear in Bollywood, while Merchant and Ivory made a slew of films, many of which were not set in India.
    • After all, he did the very same thing, pool and lunch, every Friday afternoon for five months—Friday perfect because it gave his cock a rest before the weekend, when it went into fourth gear.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for fourth gear. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA