spring-loaded
Americanadjective
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.
Many past attempts have featured metal rods inserted into lava, pushed by hand or by spring-loaded piston, or even fired into the lava like a spear, to estimate the viscosity of the flow.
From Science Daily
There was that special, spring-loaded tension of the media apparatus readying to deliver big news after days of vamping.
From New York Times
"As the thinner sea ice expands and contracts more, it generates more momentum for the sea ice, just like one of those spring-loaded toy cars goes faster the farther back you pull it," explains Tandon.
From Science Daily
The groove is spring-loaded, Caribbean-tinged and jazzy, and it works through ever-changing variations — with call-and-response vocals, teasing guitar lines, electronics and horns — on the way to a seamless segue into the next song, “Haute.”
From New York Times
Ultra Hand is named after the 1966 toy that operated like spring-loaded tongs, a relic of Nintendo’s history as a toy manufacturer.
From Washington Post
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.