See head of steam on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "The figurative sense is by metaphor from the literal one: the need of the boiler of a steam locomotive to exceed a minimum amount of pressure before the locomotive could start moving.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "heads of steam",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
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"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1919, Joseph Conrad, Typhoon:",
"text": "\"They were keeping a full head of steam, and a profound rumbling, as of an empty furniture van trotting over a bridge, made a sustained bass to all the other noises of the place.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1945 September and October, O. S. Nock, “Wartime Locomotive Working on the G.W.R.—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 255:",
"text": "Soon after passing the site of Stretfordbridge Junction Edwards opened out to 25 per cent; boiler pressure was still full up, and Taylor was spreading what was left of the fire so as to arrive in Shrewsbury with only a light head of steam.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1961 March, \"Dalmore\", “Driving and firing modern French steam steam locomotives”, in Trains Illustrated, page 150:",
"text": "[literal sense] Caffiers and Boulogne were passed with a full boiler and a full head of steam, and going up Neufchâtel I couldn't stop her blowing off.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011 January 25, Paul Fletcher, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Ipswich (agg 3 - 1)”, in BBC:",
"text": "Arsenal were starting to work up a head of steam and Tractor Boys boss Paul Jewell cut an increasingly frustrated figure on the touchline.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 March 10, Greg Morse, “Telling the railway's story on film”, in RAIL, number 926, page 43:",
"text": "[literal sense] The film is really about the driver taking control of his charge... the fireman creating a fine head of steam... the signalman keeping the traffic moving safely... [...].",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A significant amount of energy, vigour or momentum, sufficient to make progress or succeed in a task."
],
"id": "en-head_of_steam-en-noun-7dM-yWkb",
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"(idiomatic) A significant amount of energy, vigour or momentum, sufficient to make progress or succeed in a task."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
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"glosses": [
"Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see head, steam."
],
"id": "en-head_of_steam-en-noun-bxrl30jd",
"links": [
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"head",
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"_dis1": "0 100",
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"word": "head of steam"
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"etymology_text": "The figurative sense is by metaphor from the literal one: the need of the boiler of a steam locomotive to exceed a minimum amount of pressure before the locomotive could start moving.",
"forms": [
{
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"tags": [
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"pos": "noun",
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],
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{
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "1919, Joseph Conrad, Typhoon:",
"text": "\"They were keeping a full head of steam, and a profound rumbling, as of an empty furniture van trotting over a bridge, made a sustained bass to all the other noises of the place.\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1945 September and October, O. S. Nock, “Wartime Locomotive Working on the G.W.R.—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 255:",
"text": "Soon after passing the site of Stretfordbridge Junction Edwards opened out to 25 per cent; boiler pressure was still full up, and Taylor was spreading what was left of the fire so as to arrive in Shrewsbury with only a light head of steam.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1961 March, \"Dalmore\", “Driving and firing modern French steam steam locomotives”, in Trains Illustrated, page 150:",
"text": "[literal sense] Caffiers and Boulogne were passed with a full boiler and a full head of steam, and going up Neufchâtel I couldn't stop her blowing off.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2011 January 25, Paul Fletcher, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Ipswich (agg 3 - 1)”, in BBC:",
"text": "Arsenal were starting to work up a head of steam and Tractor Boys boss Paul Jewell cut an increasingly frustrated figure on the touchline.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2021 March 10, Greg Morse, “Telling the railway's story on film”, in RAIL, number 926, page 43:",
"text": "[literal sense] The film is really about the driver taking control of his charge... the fireman creating a fine head of steam... the signalman keeping the traffic moving safely... [...].",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
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],
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"(idiomatic) A significant amount of energy, vigour or momentum, sufficient to make progress or succeed in a task."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
},
{
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"English links with manual fragments"
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"Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see head, steam."
],
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"word": "head of steam"
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Download raw JSONL data for head of steam meaning in All languages combined (3.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.