on a roll

Idioms  

1. On a streak of success or intense activity, as in The team's scored three runs in the last inning and they're really on a roll, or Once the experiment succeeded, Tim was on a roll. This slangy term, alluding to the momentum in the act of rolling, dates from the second half of the 1900s, but roll alone has been used in this sense since the early 1800s.

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Example Sentences

Golf tourism in Northern Ireland is on a roll following Rory McIlroy's back-to-back triumphs at the Masters at Augusta National.

From BBC • Apr. 19, 2026

Robert Coover’s novel of sports obsession invites readers into a baseball drama in which everything depends on a roll of the dice.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 17, 2026

Göransson is on a roll, on track to win his third Oscar in this category, following “Black Panther” in 2019 and “Oppenheimer” in 2024.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 11, 2026

Shares of cybersecurity-software companies have been on a roll this week, with investors reacting to the heightened threat of digital warfare as the Iran conflict escalates.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 4, 2026

Her mom hated being interrupted when she was on a roll with her writing, and she’d been pulling eighteen-hour days since they’d come back from the library.

From "The Parker Inheritance" by Varian Johnson