full-court press
- noun
- /fʊl kɔrt prɛs/
- Informal
- The team applied a full-court press, trying to rally support from every corner of the community.
- put on a full-court press
- call a full-court press
- full-court press for health
So when he's pursuing you, he's on the full court press.
- So when he's pursuing you, he's on the full court press.
Examples
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If you are the S and entry shuttle team, it's like playing basketball, full court press all the time.
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Creating turnovers in the full court press will be a must for Charlotte to compete tonight.
Blog text (32) -
The Rockets can still have salary cap room, and general manager Daryl Morey is maintaining his full-court press on his Orlando counterpart Rob Hennigan.
Blog text (20) -
After the setbacks, the organization launched a full-court press to secure funding for its new initiative.
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In order to win the election, the candidates executed a full-court press to engage voters.
Antonyms
How Intense
Surface Forms
Morphology
full-court + press
The components give clear clues: 'full-court' (covering the whole court) plus 'press' (to apply pressure) together literally suggest an all-out, pervasive application of pressure, which maps onto the figurative sense of an intense effort. However, the expression relies on a specific sports tactic and a noun/figurative use of 'press' that a B1 learner may not automatically generalize, so the relation is partly but not fully predictable.
Etymology
Full-court press comes from basketball, where a team uses a full court press, meaning players defend across the whole court to keep constant pressure on the other team. So, the phrase now means 'a strong, all-out effort to reach a goal'.