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out of gear

See: THROW OUT OF GEAR.

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Source: A Dictionary of American Idioms

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throw out of gear

[throw out of gear] {v. phr.} 1. To separate the gears of (a car or some other machine) when you want to stop it. * /When John wanted to stop, […] A Dictionary of American Idioms

gear

[gear] See: [HIGH GEAR], [SLIP A COG] or [SLIP A GEAR], [THROW OUT OF GEAR]. A Dictionary of American Idioms

high gear

[high gear] {n. phr.}, {informal} Top speed; full activity. * /Production got into high gear after the vacation./ * /An advertising campaign for the new toothpaste promptly moved into high […] A Dictionary of American Idioms

get one's rear in gear

[get one's rear in gear] {v. phr.}, {slang} To hurry up, to get going. * /I'm gonna have to get my rear in gear./ A Dictionary of American Idioms

Slang is

"very informal usage in vocabulary and idiom that is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical, vivid and ephemeral than ordinary language" (Random House Unabridged Dictionary) - learn ~600 slang expressions

An idiom is

an expression "whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements… or from the general grammatical rules of a language"

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