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gung ho

gung ho

18 7.9
Very eager and too excited to start a task or project
  • idiom
  • /ɡʌŋ hoʊ/
  • Informal
translation icon : entusiasta
  • So a lot of risk taking and being gung ho, but in a good way.
  • so gung ho
  • really gung ho
  • too gung ho

So I'm not as gung ho when I have to contract.

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Examples

  • It's all about adapting to decline and somehow being plucky and gung-ho in spite of it all.

    Blog text (33)
  • You know how gung ho he is about improving the department's image.

  • So the question is, what happens when people get too gung ho about data science?

  • I think I may have been a bit gung-ho.

  • And when I look back on it now, it was extremely gung-ho.

  • No longer was I feeling as gung-ho as I was moments earlier.

    Blog text (17)
  • Mayor Spencer was and Mayor Battle is all gung-ho for construction.

    Blog text (29)
  • Thatcher was very gung ho about this whole thing right from the first minute.

  • Maybe he's a little too gung-ho, but I'll give him a break.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • He was very gung ho about starting the new project, always ready to take on more challenges.

Synonyms

overenthusiastic
vsgung ho
2 4.2

Feeling too excited or eager in a way that bothers other people

is very eager but sometimes enthusiastic to an excessive degree
overexuberant
vsgung ho
1 7.5

Being very lively or excited in a way that feels too much

is very enthusiastic and eager but less wildly active
gushing
vsgung ho
6.6

Giving praise in a way that sounds too excited and not honest

is very eager and excited but not always expressed effusively

How Enthusiastic

overzealous
32 7.7
gung ho
  • Informal
18 7.9
eager
447 1.0
interested
1.0
uninterested
20 3.5

Surface Forms

gung ho positive

Morphology

gung + ho

The meaning 'very enthusiastic and eager' is not transparently built from the constituents: 'ho' has no clear lexical meaning in English and 'gung' is rare/opaque, so knowing the parts would not let a learner infer the idiomatic sense. The phrase is a conventionalized loanword/idiom (originating from Chinese) with a fixed meaning in English, so B1 learners who only know the constituent items would not reliably derive it.

Etymology

Gung ho comes from a Chinese phrase meaning 'work together'. During World War II an American officer used it as a battle cry to get his soldiers excited, so today it means 'very eager'.