moon shot
- noun
- /muːn ʃɑt/
- The team embarked on a bold moon shot to develop renewable energy technology that would change the world.
So I call it our generation's moon shot, and I strongly recommend them.
- So I call it our generation's moon shot, and I strongly recommend them.
- That's the big moon shot for food of saying, what can we do to make food healthier?
- Basically, if you've ever heard of ARPA or DARPA, they came out of the US Department of Defence and were like their moon shot secret projects.
- And so the ability to take these moon shots are here because of these exponential technologies.
- And you don't want them taking moonshots, but you want to find those, that small team, that moon shot team and take them away from the main company.
- And and it's an opportunity in effect for another moon shot kind of mobilization by the United States.
- So on the cognitive side for the Eye Institute, what's what's the trade off between moon shot projects for you and maybe incremental progress?
Examples
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Launching the new community initiative was a moon shot, aiming to solve long-standing social issues in the area.
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Speaker, just a month ago, the Prime Minister described his moon shot plan where there were gonna be millions of tests done and returned every day.
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Now, at the time, this was literally a moon shot and a lot of people in the audience thought he was crazy.
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So here's the story of when I tried to get Steve and Apple to back my Moon Shot.
Blog text (16) -
That's the big moon shot for food of saying, what can we do to make food healthier?
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So it's my way of trying to help teachers teach more effectively and to empower their students so that they can have a moon shot in their classroom.
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Her ambitious plan to revolutionize education was seen as a moon shot by many of her colleagues.
Synonyms
An attempt to do something you may not succeed in
An unlikely attempt that is still worth trying
A very ambitious and risky project that may fail
How Ambitious
Surface Forms
Morphology
moon + shot
The phrase is a clear metaphorical extension of the literal 'a shot at the moon' — 'moon' evokes a distant/lofty target and 'shot' an attempt, so learners who know the constituents can often infer a sense of a bold or ambitious attempt. However, the figurative shift to meaning an 'extremely ambitious or innovative project' is not purely compositional and requires a metaphorical mapping that may not capture all nuances, so it is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Moon shot (sense 2): The noun moon shot comes from the real idea of going to the moon, a goal so big people imagined it as a brave, single shot into space. Because a real moon shot was very difficult and risky, the phrase now means 'an extremely ambitious or unlikely project'.