get one's ass in gear

verb

"get-one-s-ass-in-gear" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“get one's ass in gear” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
21
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To exert effective effort; to get going; to get moving; to start producing.

Corpus desk

Index EN-get-one-s-ass-in-gear · get one's ass in gear · English

get one's ass in gear · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 21 letters
  • VOW-7 7 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 one's ass in gear
PropertyValue
Headwordget one's ass in gear
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters21
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “get one's ass in gear” in English

get one's ass in gearsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

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

Rare enough to double-check

get one's ass in gear is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To exert effective effort; to get going; to get moving; to start producing.".

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for get one's ass in gear, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, 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 one's ass in gear, spelled G-E-T- -O-N-E-'-S- -A-S-S- -I-N- -G-E-A-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    To exert effective effort; to get going; to get moving; to start producing.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. He had been sitting there for two hours until the boss showed up and told him to get his ass in gear.

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 one's ass in gear"?
"get one's ass in gear" is spelled G-E-T- -O-N-E-'-S- -A-S-S- -I-N- -G-E-A-R.
What does "get one's ass in gear" mean?
As a verb, "get one's ass in gear" means: To exert effective effort; to get going; to get moving; to start producing.
What language does "get one's ass in gear" come from?
"get one's ass in gear" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
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