touch and go
To touch bottom lightly and continue without damage, as a vessel in motionTo touch bottom lightly and continue without damage, as a vessel in motion.
» It's touch and go.
CM · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
3 sensesTo touch bottom lightly and continue without damage, as a vessel in motion.
To perform a touch-and-go landing.
(obsolete)To briefly encounter before moving on.
Examples
9 sentencesIt's touch and go.
It was touch and go whether he would survive.
deEs stand auf des Messers Schneide, ob er überleben würde. — freddy1
It was touch-and-go there for a while.
deEs stand für eine Weile auf Messers Schneide. — Dani6187
Before you touch any food, go wash your hands first, okay?
Each time we touch the objective, we go back to square one.
Origin
The original sense, now obsolete, seems to have been that of brief encounters. The subsequThe original sense, now obsolete, seems to have been that of brief encounters. The subsequent nautical sense then gave rise first to the abstract sense (indicating a hazardous situation) and later, by physical analogy, to the aeronautical sense.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
touches and goes, touching and going, touched and went, touched and gone| Base form | touch and go · to touch and go |
|---|---|
| 3rd person singular | touches and goes |
| Present participle | touching and going |
| Past simple | touched and went |
| Past participle | touched and gone |
irregular
Lessons for this word
3 lessons- A1Present simple — Because it is a verb
- A1Past simple, regular verbs — Because of its past form
- A2Present perfect: introduction — Because of its past participle
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.