Put the Pedal to the Metal Meaning | Idioms in English
30 Minutes to Improve Your English Listening Comprehension! • Advanced Native English Listening Cha... Subscribe for new idiom videos! / @essentialenglishidioms Put the pedal to the metal meaning with idiom origin and examples of use in sentences. Subscribe for new idiom videos! / @essentialenglishidioms | Put the pedal to the metal has a more literal meaning in regards to driving, and a more figurative one in extended use. It probably originated as CB trucker lingo during the 1970s.
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To put the pedal to the metal has long been used in regards to driving a car, especially in action movies involving car chases. It means literally to press a car's gas pedal all the way to the floor but figuratively, it means to drive very fast.
If you are in a hurry you might tell a person driving to 'put the pedal to the metal' so that you will not arrive late. So, in this sense, to put the pedal to the metal means to drive faster or very fast, but it has now passed into general use.
I'll give a more precise figurative meaning but the best way to think of this idiom is 'to go faster or as fast as possible, perhaps recklessly so' whether in regards to driving a car or any other effort.
Put the Pedal to the Metal Idiom Meaning:
To put the pedal to the metal means to do something as fast as possible; to speed up one's efforts in order to accomplish a task in a shorter period.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'put the pedal to the metal' as "to accelerate, to drive at top speed; (in extended use) to proceed very rapidly or recklessly; to perform to one’s full capacity."
Idiom Examples:
"Were supposed to be at the airport at least an hour early. Put the pedal to the metal."
"They're starting this job tomorrow. We're going to have to put the pedal to the metal to be finished by end of day."
"Isn't your assignment due by tomorrow? It's time you put the pedal to the metal, don't you think?"
"We're running late but we can make up some lost time if we put the pedal to the metal."
Idiom Origin:
The pedal being referred to in this idiom is a car's accelerator or gas pedal.
Since a car's floorboard, in modern times, is normally made of metal, to put the pedal to the metal means to press the gas pedal as far down as it will go, thus making the car accelerate to the maximum. This idiom was established during the 1970s.
Another way of saying this is to 'floor it.' In this version, it's understood that the thing being "floored" is the accelerator.
I remember hearing this phrase in the 1978 trucker movie Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson aka Rubber Duck. After the Sherriff Lyle Wallace crashes his car, Rubber duck suggests that he should probably 'lay off the acrobatics' until he got better control of his car. At this point, the character Reverend Sloane breaks in to say "I don't read nothin' in scripture that says thou shall not put the pedal to the metal."
This idiom originated during the 1970s and indeed, the phrase probably originated with truckers who used it as CB lingo.
Images:
1970 AMC The Machine muscle car with red, white & blue trim by Christopher Ziemnowicz via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Car pedal image by Santeri Viinamäki via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Convoy film poster used in a scaled-down low-resolution version for the purposes of film identification.
Minimal low-resolution film stills used for context.
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English idioms are types of English sayings, expressions, or phrases. However, an idiom is different from other sayings or expressions. It is a phrase that behaves more like a word. The meaning of an idiom is not always easy to tell based on the words used. They are groups of words that mean something different than they appear to mean. These videos from Idioms.Online will help you understand the meanings of English and American idioms, learn how to use them with examples in sentences, and, when possible, will even explain the origin of these enigmatic expressions.
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