tap-tackle

tap-tackle noun: a tackle made from behind the running ball-carrier, where the tackler dives to touch the player's ankle and trips him up.

Noun

tap-tackle (plural tap-tackles)

A tackle made from behind the running ball-carrier, where the tackler dives to touch the player's ankle and trips him up.
- France's own stand-in stand-off Trinh-Duc missed with a drop-goal when well set but then set off on a curving run through a scattered defensive line which carried him deep into enemy territory until Weepu's desperate tap-tackle finally brought him down.2011 October 23, Tom Fordyce, “2011 Rugby World Cup final: New Zealand 8-7 France”, in BBC Sport
Synonyms:

ankle tap

tap-tackle (third-person singular simple present tap-tackles, present participle tap-tackling, simple past and past participle tap-tackled)

to tackle with a tap-tackle
- Farrell drilled home a 46-metre penalty and should have had another when Pollard, attempting to jink his way out of defence, was tap-tackled by Anthony Watson and penalised for not releasing.2019 November 2, Robert Kitson, “Rugby World Cup: South Africa surge to glory as England fall short”, in The Observer

Noun
plural	tap-tackles
alternative form	tap tackle
Verb
third-person singular present	tap-tackles
present participle	tap-tackling
past participle	tap-tackled
past	tap-tackled

What does tap-tackle mean?: Tap-tackle means a tackle made from behind the running ball-carrier, where the tackler dives to touch the player's ankle and trips him up.
What part of speech is tap-tackle?: Tap-tackle can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of tap-tackle?: The plural of tap-tackle is tap-tackles.

Adapted from Wiktionary: tap-tackle (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “tap-tackle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tap-tackle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.