I thought my English was pretty good but I can’t figure this out. There is one chapter in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy that starts out with “Ford Prefect hit the ground running.” I think it’s the fifth book of the trilogy. I once heard Douglas Adams speak at a book reading, and he said someone dared him to put that line in there. I don’t quite see how that’s supposed to be so funny or inappropriate. Is it an overused cliche (and if so, where did it come from), or is it a reference to something?
well I haven’t read that book but you asked if anyone knew what it meant, when a person jumps out of a car or anything moving fast they are told to hit the ground running so it won’t hurt so bad, I don’t know if this answers your question.
Sorry if I was unclear - I gathered what the phrase meant. I just didn’t understand why someone would dare him to use the phrase, because that suggests that the phrase is either a cliche or a reference to something. Or is it just bad writing?
The sentence appears as the first sentence in a chapter. It soon becomes clear that he had broken in to a buildng through the ceiling, jumped down into the hallway and started running even before he hit the floor.
I’d say it was 1980s business-babble. It’s certainly a cliche I’m familiar with. I don’t know, maybe it was just a UK thing.
A company I used to work for stated in their 1994 end-of-year newsletter that next year they intended to “hit the ground flying” - something I’d always though of as a crash. Mind you, given their approach to running a business, it seemed rather appropriate!
Bryan.
To fly, you have to try to hit the ground, and miss…
Ah, that explains it. Thanks! I think it must be UK specific, I haven’t heard it in the US. I keep forgetting that Douglas Adams uses a lot of British-specific humor. For the longest time I didn’t know that Ford Prefect was a model of a car, either.
Sorry folks but it is not a UK thing. I’m an American and I’ve used and heard that phrase for a long time. It isn’t business babble either. I don’t know where it originated though.
I feel fairly certain that this phrase predates the 1980s, and as a matter of interest, it’s widely used in Canada.
In my mind’s eye, this is a reference to paratroopers hitting the ground ready to fight.
You can hit the streets a runnin
and try to beat the masses.
Now go get yourself some cheap sunglasses. 
I heard back in the early eighties when Van Halen’s Fair Warning album came out that the line “and you hit the ground running” comes from the game of jumping out of a low-hovering (very low hovering, I’d imagine) helicopter. Whoever could break into a run as soon as their feet hit the ground instead of stumbling was the winner.
I’d imagine that this would be a nice feat to master for military purposes as well.
Strictly a WAG, but “hit the ground running” sounds like something one would have had to do getting off a cable car, or older (pre-1930s) streetcar with running boards, because the car is slowing down but not stopping.
According to allmusic.com, there are no less than 20 albums that include a track named either “Hit the Ground Running” or “Hit the Ground Runnin’”. This does not include songs that had the lyrics “hit the ground running” only songs with that title. Sounds like a cliche to me. Additionally, not all the songs were written by British folk, there were many Americans on the list.
This doesn’t mean that the phrase is English in origin.
If the book was written in America in the Nineties, Arthur and Ford might have felt “empowered” to do something. I’m sure that the use of this one word would cause all of North America to collectively gag in reflex, while other places that hadn’t been innundated with TQM might not have even noticed.
They might not have been inundated either. Still it’s the usage, not the language that’s relevant
I always assumed that the origin of the phrase was Parachuters, most likely Paratroopers. You simply want to be running as soon as you touch the ground, so that you as far out of the way,and don’t get tangled in the canopy and lines that are about to fall on your head. In war time especially, being tangled in a huge net doesn’t sound like much fun.