down the road
194
3.7
- idiom
- Should managers be thinking further down the road regarding their information system needs?
- years down the road
- further down the road
- think down the road
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Watch on YouTubeAnd I'll give you some examples down the road.
- And I'll give you some examples down the road.
- And it might be that some of my views lead down the road to some sort of catastrophe.
- They might find this good news out about me or down the road, but it won't be from me.
- And so that's maybe something we can imagine down the road.
- You're actually liking a different kind of sentence five years down the road than you were four years ago.
- Many people will talk about nightmares and dissociated moments years down the road after these relationships.
- It's it's in between being sued down the line, down the road by students they mistreated.
Examples
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But conservation is all about looking down the road and planning for the future.
Academic text (1999) -
It just leads to trouble down the road, OK?
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Because it's going to be a lot more valuable a little ways down the road in this respect.
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I mean, maybe a door opens up down the road, but for now, we're just friends.
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We are leaving our resort and walking down the road to find some coffee.
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Hospitals need to be thinking many years down the road when they first build a website.
Academic text (1997) -
The skills developed in the music classroom may take young children far down the road to becoming better readers.
Academic text (2012) -
To be fair, the economics profession has helped to direct politicians down the road toward multiple objectives.
Academic text (1993) -
We might not see results immediately, but I believe we will find success down the road.
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He plans to invest more in his education, knowing it will pay off down the road.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
At a time after now or after a time already said
∞
1.1
At some time in the future
764
1.0
At some time in the future
383
1.0
At a time after now or after a time already said
100
1.0
At some time in the future
78
1.6
It happens soon
70
4.4
At some point in the future
22
7.1
After a while
4
5.1
At a later time
3
1.2
From this time on into the future
Antonyms
How Soon
Surface Forms
Morphology
down + the + road
The temporal sense 'in the future' is a metaphorical extension of the spatial image 'further along a road' — combining 'down' (further along) with 'road' (a path) yields the idea of a later point. This mapping from space to time is common across languages, so learners who know the words may guess the meaning, but it relies on a metaphorical transfer rather than strict compositionality.
Etymology
Down the road comes from the simple image of moving down a road: things you meet further along the road happen later, not now. So it means 'in the future' or 'eventually'.