to stop the presses
3
7.9
- idiom
- Literature
:
detengan las prensas
- The editor shouted, "Stop the presses, we have breaking news to report!"
- Well, stop the presses
Examples
-
It's called communication skills—stop the presses!
Blog text (10) -
Personally, I don't think they intend to stop the presses; they intend to run the US dollar into the ground.
Blog text (23) -
Oh, man, Stop the presses, OK?
-
Wait a minute, stop the presses.
-
But hold on, stop the presses.
-
Hold everything, stop the presses, full cheese ahead.
Fiction book (1998) -
If either one of those spots is filled by a woman, I shall personally stop the presses.
Blog text (18) -
Le Monde stopped the presses to make his demise the lead story.
Academic text (2002) -
Stop the presses!
-
Stop the presses.
Antonyms
How Urgent
- Specialized
13
3.2
- Literature
3
7.9
- Literature
11
3.1
- Literature
11
2.9
- Literature
12
2.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally combines 'stop' and 'presses' (printing presses/the press), so a learner who knows the words can infer halting newspaper production and thus that something urgent has occurred. However, its common colloquial use as an exclamation meaning 'hold everything — this is breaking news' is an idiomatic, culturally bound extension of the literal sense and may not be fully predictable without exposure.
Etymology
Stop the presses comes from newspaper work: when a very important story arrived, editors would literally stop the printing presses to change the pages. So today it is said to call attention to 'urgent news' or to ask for 'immediate attention'.