Shovel-ready

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    ready for immediate commencement of excavation and construction.

    "LCDC officials emphasize that the need for shovel-ready industrial sites in this case outweighs the goal of preserving prime farmland."

  2. 2
    Describing a project which is a candidate for economic stimulus spending, the one having a more immediate impact on the economy as opposed to the project requiring a great deal of time that must elapse for architecture, zoning, legal considerations or other factors before labor can be deployed on it. broadly

Example

More examples

"LCDC officials emphasize that the need for shovel-ready industrial sites in this case outweighs the goal of preserving prime farmland."

Etymology

First used by Barack Obama during an interview with Meet the Press on 6 December 2008.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.