moonshot
Americannoun
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the act or procedure of launching a rocket or spacecraft to the moon.
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a very challenging and innovative project or undertaking.
Technology companies are investing in moonshots that address the world’s greatest problems.
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Baseball. a high-velocity home run in which the ball reaches an extraordinary height.
What could be more exciting than a bases-clearing moonshot over the right field wall in the bottom of the eleventh inning?
adjective
noun
Etymology
Origin of moonshot
An Americanism dating back to 1945–50 moonshot for def. 1; moon + shot 1; the baseball sense, also capitalized as Moon shot, was named after Wallace Wade “Wally” Moon (1930–2018), U.S. baseball player, whose home run helped the Dodgers win the 1959 pennant
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The U.S. government is swinging behind a fledgling startup’s moonshot bid to dislodge Boeing BA 4.76%increase; up pointing triangle as America’s only major maker of commercial airliners.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Much of SpaceX’s future is tied to moonshot ideas, including putting up to 1 million data centers in Earth’s orbit and sending rockets to Mars.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 26, 2026
But just as the technology seemed poised to move from moonshot to mainstream, customer complaints started coming in.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
It was powered by an army of individual investors who bought into Musk’s moonshot vision of putting data centers in space to support the rise of artificial intelligence.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Also in 2020, Google pledged to run on carbon-free energy by 2030, in what CEO Sundar Pichai heralded as a "moonshot."
From Barron's
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
