jump the gun
English
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Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]jump the gun (third-person singular simple present jumps the gun, present participle jumping the gun, simple past and past participle jumped the gun)
- (sports) To begin a race too soon, before the starting gun goes off.
- 1961 February 24, “Sport: Higher & Farther”, in Time:
- Unperturbed when an overanxious opponent jumped the gun in the women's 60-yd. dash, willowy Wilma Rudolph exploded perfectly from the starting blocks.
- (idiomatic) To act or begin too soon or without due caution.
- 1934 May 14, “Theatre: Pulitzer Pother”, in Time:
- Taking advantage of advance press releases, gabby Walter Winchell jumped the gun a full two weeks by announcing in his radio period and tabloid column that the 1933-34 prizewinner was Men in White by Sidney Kingsley.
- 1972, Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 24:
- General reading readiness is assessed by tests and is also estimated by teachers who are often skillful at discerning just when a pupil is ready to learn to read. The important thing to remember is that jumping the gun is usually self-defeating.
- 2006 May 15, Rob Hughes, “Uneasiness in Italy as Scandal Widens”, in New York Times, retrieved 3 Sept. 2011:
- The former prime minister appears to be jumping the gun, pre-empting the legal process that is just beginning to dig deeper.
- 2026 March 27, Stella Lefty, Grace Enger, Jacob Kasher Hindlin, Joe Reeves, Noah Kahan, “Boston”, in Long Way Home, performed by Stella Lefty, track 5:
- On a train back to Boston and we're jumpin' the gun / And I'm tellin' you baby, "This the part where I'd run" / But I like it when you're nice, like it when you're nice to me
- (idiomatic, finance, investing) To trade securities based on information that is not yet public; to trade on inside information.
Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to begin a race too soon
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to act without due caution
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to trade securities based on yet undisclosed information
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