“On the move” means making good progress. It’s an idiom similar to “in full swing” or “in the swing of things” and likely evolved from the tennis term “in full swing”. Idioms allow for colorful speech and often derive from sports. The phrase implies a period of smooth functioning after a previous period of difficulty.
If someone or something is described as “on the move,” it means they are making good progress in whatever they are doing. This is an English idiom that is used whenever someone gets into a good rhythm by doing something, especially after a rough start. The idiom is very similar to other idioms such as “in full swing” or “in the swing of things”. It most likely evolved from “in full swing,” which is a reference to the sport of tennis when someone is making a full stroke to put a stroke on the ball.
Whenever someone uses a word or phrase that has a meaning in the culture that is accepted as different from its original intent or the literal definitions of the words it includes, they are using an idiom. Idioms are important parts of a person’s daily speech patterns because they allow you to say things in a colorful and conversational way. They can often provide some type of shorthand to speakers as well. Many of these idioms derive from the world of sport, such as the expression “in the swing”.
Anyone or anything described in this way has achieved a certain level of balance in whatever task they are engaged in. There is also a sense of softness associated with the sentence, as if things are proceeding in good order. In this way, individual people or entire groups of people can be described. For example, someone might say, “I really feel like I’ve been on a swing at work lately since I’ve been doing so much.”
In many cases, this phrase implies that the current period of smooth functioning may follow a previous period of difficulty. This idiomatic expression is commonly used to describe someone who may have struggled when starting a task but, afterward, found a level of comfort and made impressive progress. For example, consider the sentence, “I doubted he was right for the job, but after that bad start, he’s really in the swing of things.”
The world of sport, with its rich terminology, is the source of many idioms. “Full swing” is a tennis term referring to a player who is fully extended to make a clean stroke of the tennis ball. This phrase is likely to have been the source of “in the swing” and other phrases closely related to it.
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