in gear

1. 1.

   having gears engaged

   “the car is in gear”

   Similargeared

Questions about in gear

What does in gear mean?

in gear means "having gears engaged".

Is in gear a common word?

in gear is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.