moving target

noun

A goal that is constantly changing.

Meanings

nounmoving target (plural moving targets)

plural moving targets

  1. A goal that is constantly changing.

    There’s palpable peril in the squadron’s ever-mounting bombing runs, and Cathcart’s moving target of a mission quota makes a clever parallel to contemporary America’s Forever War, but the flight sequences wind up acquiring a deadening repetitiousness

    2019 May 16, Erik Adams, “A potent satire has its wings clipped in Catch-22”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 01 Sep 2019
    1 more example

    Who knows what to call transpeople these days? The dominant discourse in the transcommunity is at best a moving target. Transgender began its life as a name for those folks who identified neither as crossdressers nor as transexuals—primarily people who changed their gender but not their genitals.

    1997, “Foreword”, in Riki Anne Wilchins, Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, →ISBN, page 15

Translations

Finnish liikkuva maali
  • liikkuva maaliTranslations
Polish ruchomy cel
  • ruchomy celTranslations
Cite this entry
APA

moving target. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/moving%20target

MLA

“moving target.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/moving%20target. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “moving target,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/moving%20target.

Source: moving target on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.