Word.ws English Dictionary

on the tack

on the tack adjective: tacking.

Adjective

on the tack (not comparable)

  1. Tacking.
  2. (slang) Without alcohol; teetotal.
    • For they were always going on the tack; a dozen pairs of sympathetic eyes would follow the consciously heroic youth as he wandered down the veranda with a glass of orange juice in his hand; and they asked anxiously, ‘How goes it, Frankie?’1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 152

Questions about on the tack

What does on the tack mean?
On the tack means tacking.
What part of speech is on the tack?
On the tack is an adjective.

Words near on the tack in the dictionary

  1. on the strength of
  2. on the stroke of
  3. on the stump
  4. on the surface
  5. on the table
  6. on the tack
  7. on the take
  8. on the tap
  9. on the tapis
  10. on the telephone
  11. on the tenterhooks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the tack (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: “on the tack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_tack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.