kick-start

Related to kick-start: Kick-off

kick-start

1. noun Literally, a metal bar on a motorcycle that one kicks down with one's foot in order to start the engine. Also called a "kick-starter." Jake hit the kick-start and peeled out of town on his motorcycle.
2. noun An action or event that serves to start, reinvigorate, or reactivate some activity, system, or process. Our productivity is beginning to slump. We need to come up with some kind of a kick-start for our employees.
3. verb Literally, to start a motorcycle by kicking down on a metal bar that activates the engine. Please don't kick-start your bike until I'm firmly on the seat behind you!
4. verb By extension, to start, reinvigorate, or reactivate some activity, system, or process. Politicians are hoping that the new stimulus package will help kick-start the economy.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • skin
  • skin me
  • skinhead
  • skins
  • rear end
  • angle
  • angling
  • fire and brimstone
  • high
  • wear (one's) apron high
References in periodicals archive
The threat of TRAPP would kick-start the British economy.
BEIRUT: The agriculture and economy ministers said Thursday they took steps to kick-start an initiative to subsidize sugar beet agriculture.
The Prime Minister will say: "This Government means business in delivering plans to help people, build new homes and kick-start the economy."
West Midland regional chairman John Rider said: "Since there is little money in the Treasury's coffers many people are assuming that there's not much George Osborne can do in the Budget to kick-start economic activity and strengthen the recovery.
FREE Body Mass Index (BMI) checks are being offered at NHS Middlesbrough's Life Store to help kick-start a on healthy eating and adopting a more active lifestyle.
City planners have taken action to try to kick-start Birmingham's flagging Pebble Mill development.
The international real estate industry will gather in Cannes, March 10-13, for what promises to be the most important MIPIM in the event's 20 year history, according to leading property executives, who expect to use the event to kick-start new real estate projects and initiatives.
Australia must develop a 'climate-change friendly' tax system to kick-start emissions-abatement initiatives ahead of the 2010 national Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), according to a recent KPMG white paper, 'Climate Change: current accounting and tax issues for Australian business leaders'.
To kick-start the planning process, SDDC fielded Task Force Bastogne, a small group of deployment command-and-control experts whose mission is to coordinate and oversee the deployment.
'I've come here to kick-start myself and kick-start Oxford,' he said.
SK Telecom was the first in the world to commercialize CDMA technology from Qualcomm and is now using its expertise to kick-start the next generation of telecommunications.
Level the playing field with Go Ask Your Grandparent/cards ($8.99), a handy deck that hooks you up with interesting questions guaranteed to kick-start a convo.
The nonprofit Trees New York; International Paper; HSBC; Starbucks; Niagara-Mohawk, a National Grid Company; and specialty retailer Eddie Bauer donated more than 500 trees to kick-start the replanting.
"It would have been nice to kick-start the development in the way we wanted to, but it does not mean (the biotechnology cluster for the northwest) is not going to work," Eccles, technology transfer officer at Lakehead University says.
Why do they use it?", for example) to kick-start innovation.