make a move
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Take action or make a decision
Literally: initiate physical or metaphorical movement
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Then, as he made no move to come any nearer, she sank back and lifted an eyebrow.
When, on 13 July, Calvo Sotelo was assassinated by Republican police in retaliation for the killing of one of their number by a Falangist, the rebels had the perfect pretext for making their move.
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 “make a move” mean?
Take action or make a decision Literally: initiate physical or metaphorical movement
Is “make a move” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.