You’re listening to Lingo Phoenix’s word of the day for July 21.

Junk Food Day

Today’s word is gun, spelled g-u-n.

gun /ɡʌn/ verb (gunned, gunning)

be gunning for something

informal to be trying very hard to obtain something

He’s gunning for your job.

Irwin is gunning for his third straight championship.

Virginian Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House and one of the conservative young Turks known to be gunning for Boehner’s job, praised some of the tax cut proposals we had included in the package.

— A Promised Land, Barak Obama

[transitive] American English informal to make the engine of a car go very fast by pressing the accelerator very hard

She let the car coast down the hill, then gunned it.

Young men gun their cars to speeds over 100 mph, often on long straight corridors such as Military Drive, Bandera and Culebra roads and sometimes on freeways.

— Bruce Selcraig, ExpressNews.com, 27 Nov. 2020

With your word of the day, I’m Mohammad Golpayegani.

We love feedback. If you want to email us, our address is [email protected], or you can find me directly on Twitter and message me there. My handle is @MoeGolpayegani.

Thanks for listening, stay safe, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow with a new word.