great guns

English

Noun

great guns

  1. plural of great gun

Adverb

great guns

  1. With great speed or energy; very quickly or energetically.
    • 1899, Thormanby, William Willmott Dixon, Kings of the hunting-field, by 'Thormanby'., page 361:
      I was on the road, and heard them running 'great guns' over the Old Hall.
    • 1904, Charles Robert Eustace Radclyffe, Big Game Shooting in Alaska, page 201:
      The wind was blowing great guns, and although dories are not notorious for their pace we made good time, and covered some ten miles in a short space of time.
    • 1906, English Mechanic and Mirror of Science and Art, page 462:
      People are often struck by the strange fact that in one portion of Cape Town a south-easter may be blowing great guns, and in another not a breath of wind, or perhaps a slight one from the opposite point […]
    • 1912, George Fitch, My Demon Motor Boat, page 53:
      The engine was running great guns, but we weren't progressing. Wright came up and sat down beside me.
    • 2006 May 18, Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine, Oxford University Press, →ISBN:
      Since The Da Vinci Code was selling great guns already by the time my book Lost Christianities appeared, my publicist at Oxford University Press, Tara Kennedy, along with my longtime editor and friend, Robert Miller, suggested that I come up with a list of historical problems with the book, so that they could give these to our marketing people  […]
    • 2014 November 1, Christian Lamb, Cruising Along: Around the World in Eighty Years, Bene Factum Publishing, →ISBN:
      […] I had to be rescued when found swimming great guns in the direction of Ceylon.
    • 2018 April 24, Rita Demmar, Hell and Power, Christian Faith Publishing, Inc., →ISBN:
      I was running running great guns. I also remember a couple of nurses and one orderly running after me. They finally caught me and one orderly gave me a fistful in the eye. I must have passed out because I only remember the next morning.

See also

References

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