shovel readyとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

First used by Barack Obama during an interview with Meet the Press on 6 December 2008.

形容詞

shovel-ready (comparative more shovel-ready, superlative most shovel-ready)

1. (Of a building project) ready for immediate commencement of excavation and construction.
   • 2003, Urban Land Institute, Urban Land‎, volume 62, number 7-12, page 44:

     LCDC officials emphasize that the need for shovel-ready industrial sites in this case outweighs the goal of preserving prime farmland.

   • 2009, Jennifer Lewington, "Battle brews over ‘shovel ready’ projects," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan 15, p. A12:

     With an eye to the imminent federal budget, Toronto business and civic leaders are set today to name $4.8-billion in "shovel-ready" projects that would stimulate the flagging local economy.

   • 2020 May 20, “Network News: Mayor urges funding advance”, in Rail, page 13:

     He wants the money injected into major infrastructure schemes and claims there are "several shovel-ready schemes just awaiting funding".

2. (by extension) Describing a project which is a candidate for economic stimulus spending, the one having a more immediate impact on the economy as opposed to the project requiring a great deal of time that must elapse for architecture, zoning, legal considerations or other factors before labor can be deployed on it.

Further reading

• shovel-ready on Wikipedia.
• “shovel-ready” in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press.