Making strides 🚶♀️📈
Meaning
Progressing significantly or achieving notable advancements.
Origin
Imagine the earliest humans taking their first tentative steps, then breaking into a run. That leap, that burst from stumbling to running, is the essence of 'making strides.' It's about moving forward with purpose and energy, leaving slower progress behind. The phrase captures that momentum, the visual of covering ground effectively, transforming a simple walk into a powerful forward motion. It evolved from that fundamental human act of moving ahead, evolving into a metaphor for all kinds of progress.
Making strides represented with emoji🚶♀️📈
This playful pairing of a walking figure and an upward-trending graph, 🚶♀️📈, not just visually represents 'making strides,' but also functions as a charming reminder of our own journeys. It invites a dialogue on the nature of progress, celebrating those moments, big or small, when we move forward with gusto. Note how the simplicity of the icons encourages us to ponder the universal human experience of advancement and growth.
Examples
- The research team is making strides in finding a cure for the disease.
- She's been making strides in her recovery and can walk short distances now.
- The little robot, a whiz with wires, was making strides toward understanding why toast always lands butter-side down.
- The company's new algorithm was making strides toward predicting when the office coffee machine would mysteriously run out of beans.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, 'making strides' is classified as an idiom. It uses the literal action of taking large steps to represent metaphorical progress or advancement.
No, 'making strides' specifically implies significant and rapid advancement. It suggests covering a lot of ground quickly, rather than incremental gains.
The opposite of 'making strides' could be 'standing still,' 'going backward,' or 'treading water.' These phrases all convey a lack of progress or even regression.
The exact origin of who first used 'making strides' is not definitively known, but its roots are in the literal act of walking or running with large steps, a concept present in descriptions of movement throughout history.