go public
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To make a private company's shares available for public trading
Literally: to make something known to the public
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
More immediately, at a stage of the season when Rangers are running away with the championship, there may be a reluctance to go public with an announcement confirming that the relegation issue is also a dead duck.
No more going public and imagining that by the gesture alone you'll be ‘ improving’ matters.
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 public” mean?
To make a private company's shares available for public trading Literally: to make something known to the public
Is “go public” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.