Word.ws English Dictionary

tick a lock

tick a lock verb: to keep quiet or keep a secret.

Verb

tick a lock (third-person singular simple present ticks a lock, present participle ticking a lock, simple past and past participle ticked a lock)

  1. To keep quiet or keep a secret.
    • “Tick-a-lock,” he pronounced; all the while twisting his fingers about his lips, and further all the while holding to his constant, dramatic, and overly-serious stare over me.2012, C. David Murphy, A Diary's House
    • When Lesnar comes back, either at WWE Survivor Series 2012 or on a future program, he just needs to tick a lock.2012 November 15, Bill Atkinson, “Brock Lesnar: Why WWE Should Never Allow Him to Cut Long Promos”, in Bleacher Report

Forms of tick a lock

third-person singular presentticks a lock
present participleticking a lock
past participleticked a lock
pastticked a lock

Questions about tick a lock

What does tick a lock mean?
Tick a lock means to keep quiet or keep a secret.
What part of speech is tick a lock?
Tick a lock is a verb.
What is the past tense of tick a lock?
The past tense of tick a lock is ticked a lock.

Words near tick a lock in the dictionary

  1. Ticinese
  2. ticing
  3. Ticino
  4. Ticinum
  5. tick
  6. tick a lock
  7. tick a lot of boxes
  8. tick all the boxes
  9. tick and flick
  10. tick and tie
  11. tick and toy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tick a lock (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: “tick a lock.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tick_a_lock. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.