Word.ws English Dictionary

telephone tag

telephone tag noun: a situation in which a person unsuccessfully attempts to contact another person by telephone and leaves a message instead, and in which the second person then unsuccessfully attempts to return the initial call and leaves a message for the first person, and so on as if the two are playing a game of tag in which the most recent person to have been left with a message is now designated as "it" (i.e. as the player now obliged to chase the other and to attempt anew to make contact).

Noun

telephone tag (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) A situation in which a person unsuccessfully attempts to contact another person by telephone and leaves a message instead, and in which the second person then unsuccessfully attempts to return the initial call and leaves a message for the first person, and so on as if the two are playing a game of tag in which the most recent person to have been left with a message is now designated as "it" (i.e. as the player now obliged to chase the other and to attempt anew to make contact).
    • Playing telephone tag with your doctor is one of the most common—and frustrating—rituals of modern medicine. You phone...can't get past the receptionist...leave a message. Your doctor calls back while you're in a meeting...leaves a message. The amount of time wasted on both sides turns everybody...1998 August 17, Christine Gorman, “E-Mail Your Doctor”, in Time
    Synonyms:
    phone tag

telephone tag meaning in Bengali

telephone tag in Bengali

এবং এভাবেই চলতে থাকে

Synonyms of telephone tag

Questions about telephone tag

What does telephone tag mean?
Telephone tag means a situation in which a person unsuccessfully attempts to contact another person by telephone and leaves a message instead, and in which the second person then unsuccessfully attempts to return the initial call and leaves a message for the first person, and so on as if the two are playing a game of tag in which the most recent person to have been left with a message is now designated as "it" (i.e. as the player now obliged to chase the other and to attempt anew to make contact).
What is telephone tag in Bengali?
Telephone tag in Bengali is এবং এভাবেই চলতে থাকে. See Telephone tag meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is telephone tag?
Telephone tag is a noun.

Words near telephone tag in the dictionary

  1. telephone rings
  2. telephone scatologia
  3. telephone sex
  4. telephone shower
  5. telephone showers
  6. telephone tag
  7. telephone typewriter
  8. telephone-bell
  9. telephone-bells
  10. telephoned
  11. telephoneless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: telephone tag (page history and authors); telephone tag (Bengali Wiktionary) (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-telephone tag.ogg.

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