Word.ws English Dictionary

tick away

tick away verb: to count down to zero (i.e. signaling the end (or start) of something).

Verb

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

  1. To count down to zero (i.e. signaling the end (or start) of something).
    • Ticking away the moments that make up the dull day1973, Roger Waters, “Time”, in The Dark Side of the Moon, performed by Pink Floyd
    • With time ticking away, Nenad Milijas fell in the box under Huth's challenge, but Sorenson saved the midfielder's spot kick to send the Potters through.2011 January 30, “Wolverhampton 0 - 1 Stoke”, in BBC

Forms of tick away

third-person singular presentticks away
present participleticking away
past participleticked away
pastticked away

Questions about tick away

What does tick away mean?
Tick away means to count down to zero (i.e. signaling the end (or start) of something).
What part of speech is tick away?
Tick away is a verb.
What is the past tense of tick away?
The past tense of tick away is ticked away.

Words near tick away in the dictionary

  1. tick a lot of boxes
  2. tick all the boxes
  3. tick and flick
  4. tick and tie
  5. tick and toy
  6. tick away
  7. tick bean
  8. tick beans
  9. tick bite
  10. tick bites
  11. tick box

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tick away (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 away.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tick_away. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.