joyride
Americannoun
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a pleasure ride in an automobile, especially when the vehicle is driven recklessly or used without the owner's permission.
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a brief, emotionally exciting interlude.
verb (used without object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of joyride
Explanation
A joyride is a speedy car ride you take just for fun. Joyrides may sound like fun, but they are usually taken in stolen cars and could therefore land you in jail. Try finding your joy elsewhere! While you can say, "Let's go for a joyride!" when you're inviting a friend for a spin around town in your red convertible, the word usually implies something less innocent. The criminal kind of joyride involves stealing a car for the sole purpose of driving it, fast, and then abandoning it. Taking cars for a joyride was a more common crime in past decades, before car alarms and other theft-prevention devices became commonly used.
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.
See Examples For:
Their vibrant, jam-packed settings depict anything from an oceanic rave to a rainbow-hued big top performance to a joyride through the cosmos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 25, 2026
Last October, a similar inflatable pumpkin went on a windy joyride, rolling into traffic and briefly “attacking” an officer before being wrangled back into submission.
From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2025
In November 2021, he went to Detroit and took the electric Hummer pickup truck for a joyride.
From Slate ● Jun. 22, 2025
When I lived in Santiago, Chile, last year, one young passenger jumped on a luggage belt and took a joyride.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 29, 2024
And of course, that was a joyride, not a lesson.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
Meanwhile, on Facebook someone responded to her post about the theft, saying they had seen the car being joyridden around a nearby estate and that it had been recorded on their CCTV.
From BBC ● May 29, 2022
"They can be seen driving through the village waving GAA flags in a fashion which could best be described as joyriding while using the siren improperly," the North Antrim MP continued.
From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2024
It also played into city-county dynamics — Harris was from the Gilmor Homes public housing in West Baltimore and had gone joyriding with friends in the stolen car to suburban Perry Hall.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 14, 2022
In his opening speech to the General Assembly, a grim Guterres highlighted the gap between the rich and poor with “billionaires joyriding to space while millions go hungry on Earth.”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 21, 2021
David Wiesner is the triply Caldecotted king of this genre: Tuesday, in which a crew of frogs go joyriding on their levitating lily pads, is my particular favorite, and Flotsam is great too.
From Slate ● Nov. 26, 2019
“That’d be a pretty good trick. I knew uglies who used to go joyriding, but not in Special Circumstances hovercars.”
From "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld
Definitions 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.
