---
title: "Not firing on all cylinders" means not thinking clearly, like an en… — Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness · tree and pragmatics
description: "Not firing on all cylinders" means not thinking clearly, like an engine running badly; often said about someone tired or ill. Who acts: engine. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and
---

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# Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness, sentence 11

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"Not firing on all cylinders" means not thinking clearly, like an engine running badly; often said about someone tired or ill.

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**Who acts:** engine · **What happens:** not fire, mean, not think, run, say · **To what, where:** cylinders · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: stupidity and madness» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (engine), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:036-dim-and-round-the-bend.lesson:11
# text = "Not firing on all cylinders" means not thinking clearly, like an engine running badly; often said about someone tired or ill.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 036-dim-and-round-the-bend.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	Not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	firing	fire	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	nsubj	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	det	_	_
6	cylinders	cylinder	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=6:punct
8	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
10	thinking	think	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	ccomp	_	_
11	clearly	clearly	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	engine	engine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
16	running	run	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	15	acl	_	_
17	badly	badly	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	16	advmod	_	_
18	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	often	often	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	said	say	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=8:conj
21	about	about	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	20	obl	_	_
23	tired	tired	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
24	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
25	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	23	conj	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **fire** *in a quote* | gerund |  |  |  | all cylinders |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent on cylinder=Destination |
| 2 | **mean** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **think** *speech: other* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | like a engine; clearly *property* | vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **run** | gerund | a engine *not said here* |  |  |  |  | badly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **say** *speech: assert* | participle |  |  |  |  |  | about someone; often *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:euphemisms:036-dim-and-round-the-bend.lesson:11`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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