Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To move with or as if with great speed and a rushing noise: an express train that hurtled past.
- v. To fling with great force; hurl.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To dash, push, or knock violently; throw or hurl.
- To move about with violence or impetuosity; whirl round; brandish.
- To rush violently and noisily; move rapidly and impetuously; go swiftly with a whirring, clashing, or clattering sound.
- n. A pimple or wart.
Wiktionary
- v. intransitive To move rapidly, violently, or without control.
- v. intransitive, archaic To meet with violence or shock; to clash; to jostle.
- v. intransitive, archaic To make a threatening sound, like the clash of arms; to make a sound as of confused clashing or confusion; to resound.
- v. transitive To hurl or fling; to throw hard or violently.
- v. intransitive, archaic To push; to jostle; to hurl.
- n. A fast movement in literal or figurative sense.
- n. A clattering sound.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To meet with violence or shock; to clash; to jostle.
- v. To move rapidly; to wheel or rush suddenly or with violence; to whirl round rapidly; to skirmish.
- v. To make a threatening sound, like the clash of arms; to make a sound as of confused clashing or confusion; to resound.
- v. obsolete To move with violence or impetuosity; to whirl; to brandish.
- v. To push; to jostle; to hurl.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make a thrusting forward movement
- v. move with or as if with a rushing sound
- v. throw forcefully
Etymologies
- Middle English hurtlen, to collide, frequentative of hurten, to knock against, damage; see hurt. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Our next hurtle is getting H. Res 111 out of the Rules committee.”
“Rocketman on Jun 7, 2008 what's a "hurtle"? christian on Jun 7, 2008”
Jon Favreau Starts Talking the Future of Iron Man « FirstShowing.net
“It really is a miracle of engineering that anything so huge, so luxurious, so fantastically adapted to the health and comfort of human beings, should be able to "hurtle" (pardon the word) through space.”
“The two young protagonists are from politically active families on opposite sides of the divide, but are childhood friends and hurtle to a tragic conclusion.”
January Books 17) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
“They speed down one narrow side street, turn abruptly, then hurtle down another, but these maneuvers are not enough for them to elude her pursuers; she can see their headlights in the side-view mirrors, vanishing as they round a corner, only to reappear a split second later.”
“Bodies hurtle, armor clanks, force fields spark, vortexes swirl, oceans roil, warriors freeze and defrost, and none of it conveys a scintilla of feeling.”
The Wall Street Journal: 'Thor': A Vehicle of Low Norsepower
“Now, with issue #10, things are racing towards a dramatic conclusion as the events of the past 9 issues hurtle the crew towards what is now know as the “cylon apocalypse” (as seen in the re-imagined mini-series) and the reasons for the decommissioning of the Galactica are about to be revealed!”
“Even grown dogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their heavy bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding on the ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward to the mother earth.”
“Most fatal accidents in Delhi occur in the small hours, when fast cars driven by young, wealthy and often drunk men hurtle across the city.”
The Guardian: Delhi's traffic chaos has a character of its own | Jason Burke
“In the hands of Riccardo Chailly and his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra – who have taken up residency last week and this at the Barbican for a Beethoven symphonies cycle – this sense of forward momentum can only be described in terms of whipped-up velocity: gallop, pound, hurtle, pelt, vroom.”
The Guardian: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Chailly; Castor and Pollux– review
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hurtle’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Steampunk
Words used quite often in steampunk
ansible, airship, chymical, valve, clockwork, dirigible, thaumaturgy, copper, bronze, difference engine, gear, rivets and 521 more...
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Lesson 8
you'll see
acrid, casualty, congested, cope, headlong, hurtle, impede, inevitable, initate, irate, lax, negligent and 3 more...
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Vocab8
acrid, casualty, congested, cope, headlong, hurtle, impede, inevitable, initiate, irate, lax, negligent and 3 more...
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vocab#8
acrid, casualty, congested, cope, headlong, hurtle, impede, inevitable, initiate, irate, lax, negligent and 3 more...
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(more or less) Temporary Urth List
Temporary list is temporary.
Collecting a few words here, which are then to be alloted to other lists.vassal, gnaw, putrescence, liege, pederasty, disseminate, loot, waning, fitful, hiatuse, plow, pious and 292 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, H
hurlyburly, hurtle, hodgepodge, heartwood, hatch, halo, hooptedoodle, hacienda, hairpin, heyday, hardscrabble, hopper and 208 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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Tunguska
stupendous, tremendous, immense, solicitous, crust, seismometer, explosion, impact, supersonic, sonic boom, boisterous, bituminous and 13 more...
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NakedFringe's Words
masticate, chamber, orchid, mandolin, yellow, pomegranate, conundrum, paradox, gyrate, calamitous, opalescent, cacophony and 533 more...
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My GRE
concomitant, mendacity, corollary, mandate, ascertain, exacerbate, substantiate, perennial, exemplify, hegemony, acrimonious, repertoire and 653 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 2253 more...
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New Words
smarmy, purge, linger, shimmer, fiercely, frantically, shove, grunt, errand, clench, wriggle, squeeze and 168 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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Favorite English Words (1)
simpering, tenebrous, lugubrious, locution, cavalcade, mansuetude, bremsstrahlung, foofaraw, legerdemain, concinnity, soporific, alacrity and 97 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hurtle.

seanahan I've heard it used a number of times in an astronomical context. May 15, 2009
bilby Might just be sportswriter hyperbole. May 14, 2009
yarb Interesting; I've not seen that transitive use of it before. May 13, 2009
bilby "A couple of hours after that 6-4 loss, the Angels suffered a loss much more painful and lasting. A van driven by Andrew Thomas Gallo, a 22-year-old Riverside resident, ran a red light at the Fullerton intersection of Lemon and Orangethorpe and slammed the two-door Eclipse in which Adenhart was a passenger, hurtling it against a telephone pole."
- Tom Singer, Angels' Adenhart killed in accident mlb.com, 9 April 2009.
May 13, 2009