to floor it
17
8.0
- phrasal verb
- /flɔr ɪt/
- Informal
:
pisar el acelerador a fondo
- As soon as the light turned green, he decided to floor it and race ahead of the other cars.
- just floor it
- go! Floor it
- then floor it
He's like floored it and crashed into the wall.
- He's like floored it and crashed into the wall.
- It's reasonably peppy when you floor it, it's quick enough, but it's not fast.
- Flooring it wow, you know it's very quick the moment you floor it because the torque is instantaneous.
- I have to I'm going to have to floor it.
- Or and you in there just for you know, you had a couple of Bush lights and fucking decided to floor it on the way home.
- And then to test the object detection, they were like here pointed at this barrier, floor it like, really.
Examples
-
Come on, let's go, floor it!
-
Floor it, Cody, step on it!
-
I am going to floor it.
-
I'm going to floor it!
Fiction book (1997) -
Louise puts the car in gear and floors it.
Fiction book (1991) -
Marvin gets back in and floors it.
Fiction book (1991) -
Panicking, Lucy floors it and loses control.
Fiction book (1994) -
Deciding to see what this baby can do, he checks the rear-view mirror, sees no one, then floors it.
Fiction book (1990) -
Murtaugh floors it up the ramp and onto the freeway.
Fiction book (1998) -
Miraculously, it roars throatily to life; he floors it, and the Rover tears away from the station and off down the road.
Fiction book (2001)
Synonyms
35
5.2
To hurry and go faster, often when driving
9
3.7
To press the pedal in a car to make it go faster or hurry to finish something
8
3.6
Press the car pedal to make it go faster
7
6.3
To drive or work as fast as possible, often to finish something
Antonyms
How Fast
Surface Forms
Morphology
floor + it
The sense 'press the accelerator to the floor' is partially derivable from the constituent 'floor' (concept of the floor/ground) but requires a metaphorical mapping—treating the pedal as something to push to the floor—and the pronoun 'it' is semantically empty here. Because the meaning depends on this metaphorical extension and the particle-like use of 'it' rather than a straightforward composition, a B1 learner who only knows the basic word meanings may only partly infer the full sense without prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrase floor it comes from the image of pressing the car's gas pedal all the way down to the floor. Because this makes the car speed up a lot, the phrase now means 'to speed up'.