go great guns
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To be very successful or popular
Literally: fire guns successfully
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Betterware France is going great guns at the end of its first year.
It is going great guns with special lines, the Fortress Alarm and the upgraded, fancy number, the Citadel.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “go great guns” mean?
To be very successful or popular Literally: fire guns successfully
Is “go great guns” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.