make hay
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
Productive or successful in a short time.
Where it’s used:
Used
Business & corporate jargon
Examples
At the time of writing solicitors are making hay with a flood of complaints about homes found to contain undisclosed faults after the buyer has moved in.
Against a slow - moving catcher like the Giants ' Terry Kennedy in the World Series, Henderson is expected to make hay.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Imported from Wikipedia “List of business terms” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29), pending review.
Common questions
What does “make hay” mean?
Productive or successful in a short time.
Is “make hay” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.