Word.ws English Dictionary

ticked a lock

ticked a lock is the simple past and past participle of tick a lock.

Meaning of tick a lock

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

Questions about ticked a lock

What is ticked a lock the simple past and past participle of?
Ticked a lock is the simple past and past participle of tick a lock.

Words near ticked a lock in the dictionary

  1. tickbites
  2. tickborne
  3. tickbox
  4. tickboxes
  5. ticked
  6. ticked a lock
  7. ticked all the boxes
  8. ticked and tied
  9. ticked and toyed
  10. ticked away
  11. ticked by

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ticked a lock (page history and authors); 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: “ticked a lock.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ticked_a_lock. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.