Pick up steam?

Reader question:

Please explain “pick up steam” in this sentence: Her career really picked up steam after her first movie.

My comments:

Her first movie was a launching pad, so to speak. She did well in it and, after that, she started to get more offers, one after another – at a faster and faster pace.

To pick up steam is to pick up pace or speed, like a railway train.

“Steam” in “pick up steam”, you see, refers to the steam produced by a steam engine that powered, among other vehicles, railway trains.

Youngsters who marvel at the speed and comfort of Gao Tie (High-speed Railway) today have no idea what trains used to be like.

Like I said, they were once powered by steam locomotives.

People who are as old as yours truly saw these trains in person back in the 1960s and 1970s. We saw “steam”, literally, steam being the “white smoke” or vapor created by the steam engine. When the white smoke started spilling out from the side of a train, we knew it was ready to move. And as the white smoke billowed out in greater and greater quantities, the train picked up speed, moving faster and faster.

And this where the idiom “pick up steam” comes from, meaning picking up pace and speed.

Figuratively speaking, when we talk about other things than the railway train, “picking up steam” is synonymous with gathering speed after a slow start, becoming faster, stronger, better, more vigorous, more effective, so on and so forth.

In our example, the actress’s career really picked up after her first film. She was more recognized after her initial success. More directors gave her roles.

Hopefully soon, now that her career had picked up steam, she’d become a star, a big star.

If, that is, she could keep the momentum going.

All right?

All right, let’s read a few media examples of things picking up steam:

1. Manchester City have spent the season trying to adapt Erling Haaland to their intricate style of play and, make no mistake, that will continue to be the end goal. But in recent weeks, it looks more like Manchester City have adapted to Erling Haaland.

The last few City games have been accompanied by sarcastic cries of ‘I thought Haaland was supposed to have made this team worse?!’ as he has scored 13 goals in five games and helped make Pep Guardiola’s side look devastating.

After five games against teams who, to different extents, pressed City and left spaces to be exploited, Leicester came to the Etihad Stadium on Saturday, sat deep and… were blown away anyway.

The reason there was an argument that Haaland has made City worse is twofold: there was a rough patch after the World Cup when the whole team struggled and, well, they have been less fluid than they were with a false nine. Even Guardiola admits City’s style has had to change slightly and, earlier in the season in particular, things had not fully clicked.

It looks like that has happened now and as they have been given spaces to exploit, they have done so ruthlessly.

“We are not a team to make big transitions of 40 to 50 metres,” Guardiola said in January 2021, just as his false nine City were picking up steam. “We need to play one type of football and with transitions like United, Liverpool, Tottenham, we cannot play in that way, we are not good in that way.”

But look at them now! A fortnight ago, Guardiola said: “We have Kevin (de Bruyne), we have Jack (Grealish), we have Erling especially and Julian (Alvarez) and they can run, definitely. And I love it, I like it.”

It is something that makes them a very dangerous proposition in the Champions League in particular.

It was Jamie Carragher who said Haaland may have “picked the wrong club” in City, which was what generated headlines, but the reasoning was sound enough.

“I think we’re only seeing 60 per cent of Erling Haaland,” the former Liverpool defender said after City lost at Spurs, with Haaland barely getting into the game, not for the first time. “He’s come from Borussia Dortmund and a counter-attacking league where it’s end-to-end, you see that blistering pace he’s got, but we don’t see it (now). Manchester City as a team will not play end-to-end football, it’s not Pep Guardiola’s way, they build up slowly, push the opposition back to the edge of the box and play from there.”

He was right about that, but in recent weeks things have changed and City now look like that kind of counter-attacking team – even if they are not.

- Manchester City have adapted to Erling Haaland, NYTimes.com, April 20, 2023.

2. Protests at Tesla showrooms and dealerships that are united by the slogan #TakedownTesla are picking up steam – with over 65 actions planned around the country and in Europe through the end of this week, and dozens scheduled for Saturday alone.

Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, has become a site of resistance in the growing movement against the GOP megadonor’s central role in the second Trump administration.

Since Trump’s inauguration, Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency have helped oversee punishing cuts to the federal workforce, infiltrated government agencies, and gained access to computer systems with sensitive personal information.

Because Musk is unelected, the protest movement urges people to make their voices heard as consumers – by selling their vehicles, getting rid of their stock in Tesla, and showing up to protest.

Already, protests have taken place in Devon, Pennsylvania; Berkley, California; Tucson, Arizona; Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Signs at protests include messages likes “Musk is the Fraud” and “Tesla Funds Fascists,” in part a reference to Musk’s apparent Nazi salute during a post-inauguration celebration.

“No One Voted for This,” assert the organizing materials provided on the #TeslaTakedown website.

Actor and director Alex Winter, one of the core organizers behind the protests and the creator of the movement’s website, said that #TakedownTesla started on Bluesky between friends and activists and grew, according to Business Insider. It grew after Winter created the website to help centralize the effort.

“There have now been protests outside of Tesla locations in over 100 cities, and the movement is picking up speed and going global,” wrote Winter in a piece for Rolling Stone that was published on February 21.

“We need an alternative to watching things unravel from our couches, that inspires hope and shows that we still have the capacity to oppose those who want to tear the fabric of our society apart and extract their own benefit from the wreckage,” he continued.

Tesla’s stock experienced a bump after Trump’s election, but the company’s share price has plummeted more than 40% from its post-election peak in December, wiping out those gains. The tumbling of its stock meant that February was Tesla’s second-worst month on record, only eclipsed by the 37% loss the stock experienced in December 2022, according to Yahoo Finance.

- ‘No One Voted for This’: #TeslaTakedown Actions Pick Up Steam, CommonDreams.org, March 5, 2025.

3. Inflation picked up steam last month amid early signs that President Trump’s tariffs are beginning to have an effect on the prices shoppers see in stores.

Consumer prices in June were up 2.7% from a year ago, according to a report Tuesday from the Labor Department. That’s a larger annual increase than the month before.

Prices rose 0.3% between May and June, also a sharper increase than the previous month.

Rising rents were the main driver of inflation in June. But the price of clothing, appliances and toys also jumped – which likely reflects the effects of import taxes. Clothing prices rose 0.4% while the price of appliances and toys jumped nearly 2%.

Energy and food costs were also higher in June, while the price of new and used cars and airline tickets was down.

The president has imposed tariffs of at least 10% on nearly everything the U.S. imports, with higher taxes on goods from China. The government collected $27 billion from tariffs in June – a four-fold increase from the same month a year ago.

The average tariff on imported goods is now the highest it’s been since the Great Depression. And Trump has threatened to impose even higher taxes on goods from many countries, beginning on August 1.

- Inflation heats up in June as President Trump’s tariffs start to bite, NPR.org, July 15, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）