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Hurdle vs. Hurtle
Indistinguishable in speech, the words hurtle and hurdle can be a confusing pair.
Hurtle is a verb with two meanings: "to move rapidly or forcefully," as in "The stone was hurtling through the air," and "to hurl or fling," as in "I hurtled the stone into the air." Note that the first use is intransitive: the stone isn't hurtling anything; it itself is simply hurtling. The second use is transitive: something was hurtled—in this case, a stone.
Hurdle is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, its most common meanings have to do with barriers: the ones that runners leap over, and the metaphorical extension of these, the figurative barriers and obstacles we try to similarly overcome. The verb hurdle has two meanings, and they are directly related to these. It can mean "to leap over especially while running," as in "She hurdled the fence," and it can mean "to overcome or surmount," as in "They've had to hurdle significant financial obstacles." The verb hurdle is always transitive; that is, there's always a thing being hurdled, whether it be a physical obstacle or a metaphorical one.
Synonyms
- barrel
- belt
- blast
- blaze
- blow
- bolt
- bomb [slang]
- bowl
- breeze
- bundle
- bustle
- buzz
- cannonball
- careen
- career
- chase
- course
- crack (on)
- dash
- drive
- fly
- hare
- hasten
- hie
- highball
- hotfoot (it)
- hump
- hurl
- hurry
- hustle
- jet
- jump
- motor
- nip
- pelt
- race
- ram
- rip
- rocket
- run
- rush
- rustle
- scoot
- scurry
- scuttle
- shoot
- speed
- step
- tear
- travel
- trot
- whirl
- whisk
- zip
- zoom
Examples of hurtle in a Sentence
K.j. Yossman, Variety, 9 May 2024
On Wednesday, air raid alarms blared through Ukrainian cities and villages for several hours in the early morning, sending people scrambling for shelter and checking official social media channels to find out which Russian missiles were hurtling toward them.
—Constant Méheut, New York Times, 8 May 2024
Footage circling social media shows at least one protester hurtling down steps.
—Sanya Mansoor, TIME, 1 May 2024
Bystanders and British news outlets flooded social media with footage of two saddled horses — one black and one white, with bright red liquid covering its chest and legs — hurtling through busy city streets.
—Rachel Treisman, NPR, 24 Apr. 2024
While Hanuman is flying up to the sun, Indra, the king of the gods, strikes him with a thunderbolt, breaking his jaw and sending him hurtling to the ground.
—Aaron Boorstein, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Apr. 2024
With the 95,000-ton cargo ship Dali powerless and hurtling helplessly toward the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the harbor pilot commanding the vessel had just minutes to make his last, desperate attempts to avoid disaster.
—Joshua Goodman and Richard Lardner, Quartz, 29 Mar. 2024
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously sent Sherlock Holmes hurtling to his death over the Reichenbach Falls: His tiresome infallibility must have grated on Doyle, who saw himself as destined for a more highbrow literary fame than 19th-century detective fiction allowed.
—Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2024
No wonder, then, that the companies also became a useful symbol as the nation hurtled from election to war.
—Jon Grinspan, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hurtle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Articles Related to hurtle
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Cite this Entry
“Hurtle.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hurtle. Accessed 18 May. 2024.
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