get going

verb

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

"get-going" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“get going” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To leave, to depart, to get moving.

Corpus desk

Index EN-get-going · get going · English

get going · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "G" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for get going
PropertyValue
Headwordget going
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “get going” in English

get goingranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

get going is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 7 senses are on record.

No generated misspelling entries exist for get going in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is get going, spelled G-E-T- -G-O-I-N-G.

Definition

  1. 1
    To leave, to depart, to get moving.
  2. 2
    To begin or commence.
  3. 3
    To excite intellectually.
  4. 4
    To arouse sexually.
  5. 5
    To talk passionately without interruption.
  6. 6
    To cause someone to talk passionately without interruption.
  7. 7
    To cry or bawl loudly.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how get going appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. It is quite late, I'd best get going before sunset.
  2. We'd better get this project going. If we don't get going on it soon, we won't finish in time.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "get going"?
"get going" is spelled G-E-T- -G-O-I-N-G.
What does "get going" mean?
As a verb, "get going" means: To leave, to depart, to get moving.
What language does "get going" come from?
"get going" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list