"wing it" meaning in English

See wing it in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-wing it.ogg [Australia] Forms: wings it [present, singular, third-person], winging it [participle, present], winged it [participle, past], winged it [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} wing it (third-person singular simple present wings it, present participle winging it, simple past and past participle winged it)
  1. (informal) To improvise; to make things up or figure things out as one goes; to perform with little or no preparation. Tags: informal Synonyms: fly by the seat of one's pants, improvise, make it up as one goes along, play by ear
    Sense id: en-wing_it-en-verb-14ztzFT3 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms with placeholder "it"

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for wing it meaning in English (2.6kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wings it",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "winging it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "winged it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "winged it",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "wing it (third-person singular simple present wings it, present participle winging it, simple past and past participle winged it)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with placeholder \"it\"",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I don't know their system, but I think I can wing it.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "I didn't study for today's test, so I'll have to wing it.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017 January 20, Annie Zaleski, “AFI sounds refreshed and rejuvenated on its 10th album, AFI (The Blood Album)”, in The Onion AV Club",
          "text": "Plus, early in a career, bands are typically winging it from a creative standpoint; after awhile, acts figure out what they’re doing right (or wrong), and are more deliberate about songcraft and execution.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 June 2, Rowena Mason, “Keir Starmer: 'Boris Johnson has to get a grip and restore public confidence'”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "“My [worry] is that after a week or more of mismanagement, I’m deeply concerned the government has made a difficult situation 10 times worse ... There is a growing concern the government is now winging it,” he said.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To improvise; to make things up or figure things out as one goes; to perform with little or no preparation."
      ],
      "id": "en-wing_it-en-verb-14ztzFT3",
      "links": [
        [
          "improvise",
          "improvise"
        ],
        [
          "preparation",
          "preparation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) To improvise; to make things up or figure things out as one goes; to perform with little or no preparation."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "fly by the seat of one's pants"
        },
        {
          "word": "improvise"
        },
        {
          "word": "make it up as one goes along"
        },
        {
          "word": "play by ear"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-wing it.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/48/En-au-wing_it.ogg/En-au-wing_it.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/En-au-wing_it.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wing it"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "wings it",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "winging it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "winged it",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "winged it",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "wing it (third-person singular simple present wings it, present participle winging it, simple past and past participle winged it)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with placeholder \"it\"",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I don't know their system, but I think I can wing it.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "text": "I didn't study for today's test, so I'll have to wing it.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017 January 20, Annie Zaleski, “AFI sounds refreshed and rejuvenated on its 10th album, AFI (The Blood Album)”, in The Onion AV Club",
          "text": "Plus, early in a career, bands are typically winging it from a creative standpoint; after awhile, acts figure out what they’re doing right (or wrong), and are more deliberate about songcraft and execution.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 June 2, Rowena Mason, “Keir Starmer: 'Boris Johnson has to get a grip and restore public confidence'”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "“My [worry] is that after a week or more of mismanagement, I’m deeply concerned the government has made a difficult situation 10 times worse ... There is a growing concern the government is now winging it,” he said.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To improvise; to make things up or figure things out as one goes; to perform with little or no preparation."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "improvise",
          "improvise"
        ],
        [
          "preparation",
          "preparation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) To improvise; to make things up or figure things out as one goes; to perform with little or no preparation."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-wing it.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/48/En-au-wing_it.ogg/En-au-wing_it.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/En-au-wing_it.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "fly by the seat of one's pants"
    },
    {
      "word": "improvise"
    },
    {
      "word": "make it up as one goes along"
    },
    {
      "word": "play by ear"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wing it"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.