hit upon

English

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Verb

hit upon (third-person singular simple present hits upon, present participle hitting upon, simple past and past participle hit upon)

  1. To address.
    He hit upon all major concerns during the presentation.
  2. (idiomatic) To think of; to discover or invent.
    • 1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC:
      So next day the hunting began. I did not know how to shoot, but I proceeded to learn. And when I had expended some thirty shells for three seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted before I acquired the necessary knowledge. I had used eight shells for lighting fires before I hit upon the device of banking the embers with wet moss, and there remained not over a hundred shells in the box.
    • 2006 October 10, Miguel Helft, Matt Richtel, “Venture Firm Shares a YouTube Jackpot”, in New York Times:
      They hit upon the idea of a site that would help users exchange video files.

See also

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