Indistinguishable in speech, the words hurtle and hurdle can be a confusing pair.
Hurtle is a verb with two meanings: "to move rapidly or forcefully," as in "The stone was hurtling through the air," and "to hurl or fling," as in "I hurtled the stone into the air." Note that the first use is intransitive: the stone isn't hurtling anything; it itself is simply hurtling. The second use is transitive: something was hurtled—in this case, a stone.
Hurdle is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, its most common meanings have to do with barriers: the ones that runners leap over, and the metaphorical extension of these, the figurative barriers and obstacles we try to similarly overcome. The verb hurdle has two meanings, and they are directly related to these. It can mean "to leap over especially while running," as in "She hurdled the fence," and it can mean "to overcome or surmount," as in "They've had to hurdle significant financial obstacles." The verb hurdle is always transitive; that is, there's always a thing being hurdled, whether it be a physical obstacle or a metaphorical one.
Boulders hurtled down the hill.
We kept to the side of the road as cars and trucks hurtled past us.
The protesters hurtled bottles at the police.
He hurtled himself into the crowd.
Recent Examples on the WebVargas then quickly had to dodge even farther to his left to avoid Jackson’s pitch, which was hurtling straight for his head.—Chuck Schilken, Los Angeles Times, 21 May 2024 Three people, including a 6-year-old, perished after an Amtrak train hurtled into their car in upstate New York on Friday night.—Christina Coulter, Fox News, 20 May 2024 The eruption occurred following a weekend in which solar flares sent coronal mass ejections hurtling toward Earth that produced the strongest geomagnetic storm in more than two decades.—Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 15 May 2024 The coronal mass ejections hurtling toward Earth prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue a rare Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch on Thursday for the first time in 19 years.—Enquirer Staff, The Enquirer, 11 May 2024 The end is brutal for electrons hurtling at 99.9999999% of the speed of light through SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s two-mile-long beam pipe: a final slam into End Station A.—Lyndie Chiou, Quanta Magazine, 7 May 2024 Along with their diabetic son Nathan, the couple were forced to flee in the first film as a comet hurtled towards earth, threatening to destroy the planet.—K.j. Yossman, Variety, 9 May 2024 On Wednesday, air raid alarms blared through Ukrainian cities and villages for several hours in the early morning, sending people scrambling for shelter and checking official social media channels to find out which Russian missiles were hurtling toward them.—Constant Méheut, New York Times, 8 May 2024 Footage circling social media shows at least one protester hurtling down steps.—Sanya Mansoor, TIME, 1 May 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hurtle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
Middle English hurtlen to collide, frequentative of hurten to cause to strike, hurt
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