against the clock

1. 1.

   as fast as possible; before a deadline

   “it was a race against the clock”

   Synonymsagainst time

Questions about against the clock

What does against the clock mean?

against the clock means "as fast as possible; before a deadline".

What is another word for against the clock?

Close synonyms include against time. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is against the clock a common word?

against the clock is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.