steal a march
idiom

- to gain an advantage over (someone) by acting before they do

The Oxford Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The expression "steal a march" derives from the military sense of secretly moving troops to gain an advantage over the enemy — in medieval warfare, a march was the distance an army could travel in a day. By quietly marching at night, a force could surprise and overtake the enemy at daybreak. Its figurative use dates from the second half of the 1700s.

In this context "steal", which can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic stelan, means to move quietly. It has cognates in other languages such as the German stehlen and is associated with the English word “stealth” (Heimlichkeit).

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STEALING THUNDER!

Apart from “stealing a march”, you can also "steal someone's thunder”, which refers to using another's idea, especially to one's advantage.

This idiom comes from John Dennis, a 17th century playwright and critic, invented a new method of simulating the sound of thunder in the theatre and used it in his own unsuccessful play "Appius and Virginia". The play closed after a short run, but Dennis later attended a performance of Macbeth by a rival company and discovered they had stolen his thunder effect. He furiously exclaimed:

“Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!”

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SYNONYMS

be ahead of the curve, be in the lead, be in the vanguard, be one step ahead, be out in front, beat someone to the punch, get ahead of, get a head start on, get the drop on, get the jump on, have the edge on, outdistance, outmaneuver, outpace, outperform, outrun, outshine, outstrip, overtake, STEAL A MARCH on, surpass, upstage

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“In the battle for creating ‘Artificial General Intelligence’, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are using their best brains and AI systems to STEAL A MARCH on each other."  

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THANKS to Wiebke for suggesting today's word!

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