"Get the Ball Rolling" Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English Idioms

Описание: 0:00 - How to Say, “Get the ball rolling.”
0:36 - Meaning of “Get the ball rolling.”
2:42 - Origin of “Get the ball rolling.”
3:19 - Examples of “Get the ball rolling.”
4:24 - Conclusion

“Get the ball rolling.”

Perhaps you’ve heard someone say that they wanted to “get the ball rolling” when talking about getting a start on a task.

You might have been involved in a group project at school and someone said, “Alright folks, it’s time to get the ball rolling, otherwise we’ll fall behind.”

As you can see, the idiom “get the ball rolling” means to get something started, whether it is a small task or a large project.

With this idiom, it is easy to visualize a ball rolling down a hill and how you must first push the ball down the hill to get it started. You must get the ball going.

“Keep the ball rolling,” is another popular idiom which is directly related to, “get the ball rolling.”

As you can imagine, once the ball is rolling, if it ever comes to a stop for some reason, you must keep it rolling in order to get it to its destination.

In other words, you need to keep the ball rolling so that you finish what you started, so that you reach your goal.

Once you’ve reached your goal, it’s time to get another ball rolling!

In fact, it is widely known in the field of psychology that the happiest type of person is one who has goals and is working toward them.

When humans are working toward goals - in other words, “keeping the ball rolling” - they are happiest.

When a goal is reached, a new goal must come to take its place, otherwise unhappiness will start to set in.

The idiom, “get the ball rolling,” is said to have originated with the game “croquet” in the 1850s, when the game arrived in Britain from France.

In France, croquet was called “pall-mall” and had been around since the 1600s. It’s a simple game where players use long mallets to get balls to roll through hoops on the ground.

If you find yourself hesitant to get started on working toward one of your goals, your parents might say to you, “You’ve wanted to be an artist since you were little. Now it’s time to get the ball rolling.”

Maybe one of your friends is procrastinating, putting off starting her application for a working holiday in Canada, “You need to get the ball rolling, as the paperwork takes a long time!”

Perhaps you are the manager for a project at work and your team is slowing down, you might say during a meeting, “We did a great job getting the ball rolling, but now it’s time to keep the ball rolling. Our project is going so well!”

Considering that goals are so important to our well-being, “getting the ball rolling” and “keeping the ball rolling” are indispensable idioms!

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