Word.ws English Dictionary

kicking the can down the road

kicking the can down the road is the present participle and gerund of kick the can down the road.

Meaning of kick the can down the road

Verb

kick the can down the road (third-person singular simple present kicks the can down the road, present participle kicking the can down the road, simple past and past participle kicked the can down the road)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To avoid or postpone a decision or action; to procrastinate.
    • Ronald Lehman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategic and theater nuclear bombs, said the United States was satisfied with its land-based deterrent for many years and "there was a tendency to kick the can down the road and not pay enough attention to its problems.1983 April 5, “Will MX Succeed This Time?”, in Bennington Banner, Bennington, VT, page 8

Questions about kicking the can down the road

What is kicking the can down the road the present participle and gerund of?
Kicking the can down the road is the present participle and gerund of kick the can down the road.

Words near kicking the can down the road in the dictionary

  1. kicking strap
  2. kicking straps
  3. kicking tail
  4. kicking the beam
  5. kicking the bucket
  6. kicking the can down the road
  7. kicking the habit
  8. kicking the shit out of
  9. kicking the tires
  10. kicking the tires and lighting the fires
  11. kicking the tyres

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kicking the can down the road (page history and authors); kick the can down the road (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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Cite this entry: “kicking the can down the road.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kicking_the_can_down_the_road. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.