Word.ws English Dictionary

kick into touch

kick into touch verb: to kick a ball over the touchline in a game of rugby, often to avoid pressure from the opponent team in a difficult situation, to end injury time or to gain territory.

Verb

kick into touch (third-person singular simple present kicks into touch, present participle kicking into touch, simple past and past participle kicked into touch)

  1. (UK) To kick a ball over the touchline in a game of rugby, often to avoid pressure from the opponent team in a difficult situation, to end injury time or to gain territory.
  2. (Ireland, UK, idiomatic) To evade an issue; to stop from happening.
    • It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm going to kick it into touch.
    • With referee Mark Clattenburg at the centre of a new racism row, is football once more succumbing to a blight many thought had been kicked into touch?2012 October 29, Barney Ronay, “Is the Premier League becoming racist again?”, in The Guardian

Forms of kick into touch

third-person singular presentkicks into touch
present participlekicking into touch
past participlekicked into touch
pastkicked into touch
alternative formkick to touch

Questions about kick into touch

What does kick into touch mean?
Kick into touch means to kick a ball over the touchline in a game of rugby, often to avoid pressure from the opponent team in a difficult situation, to end injury time or to gain territory.
What part of speech is kick into touch?
Kick into touch is a verb.
What is the past tense of kick into touch?
The past tense of kick into touch is kicked into touch.

Words near kick into touch in the dictionary

  1. kick in the bollocks
  2. kick in the butt
  3. kick in the pants
  4. kick in the teeth
  5. kick into the long grass
  6. kick into touch
  7. kick it
  8. kick like a mule
  9. kick loose
  10. kick off
  11. kick off meeting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kick into touch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-kick into touch.ogg.

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