grease the wheels
Idioms & Phrases
grease the wheels
Also, oil the wheels. Make things run smoothly, as in You can count on Ben to grease the wheels so we'll be waited on promptly. This metaphoric expression transfers literal lubrication to figurative. [Mid-1600s]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
Cite This Source
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
Cite This Source
Explore Dictionary.com
More from Thesaurus.com
Synonyms and Antonyms for grease the wheels
More from Reference.com
Search for articles containing grease the wheels
More from Dictionary.com Translator
Translate grease the wheels into French
Translate grease the wheels into German
Translate grease the wheels into Italian
Translate grease the wheels into another language
00:10
Grease the wheels
is always a great word to know.
So is ninnyhammer. Does it mean:
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| a fool or simpleton; ninny. |
Dictionary.com Word FAQs
Dictionary.com presents 366 FAQs, incorporating some of the frequently asked questions from the past with newer queries.
Nearby Words
Copyright © 2013 Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
