From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishset/put something in motionset/put something in motionSTART something/MAKE something STARTto start a process or series of events that will continue for some time The Church voted to set in motion the process allowing women to be priests. Once the house had been sold, Jane set the wheels in motion (=started the process) to find somewhere smaller to live. → motion
Examples from the Corpus
set/put something in motion• Oliver corrected the clock and set it in motion.• Corot set the countryside in motion.• How easy to see how a white kid could set this in motion with hardly any effort.• The discovery set in motion two days of searching for the bodies.• The programme had lost the man responsible for setting it in motion.• On Jan. 13, Vega said, Guzman set his plot in motion.• He has set the ball in motion.• It is both wasteful and irresponsible to set experiments in motion and omit to record and analyse what happens.• A tiny pilot light, if you like, that was necessary to set everything else in motion. 