Word.ws English Dictionary

ticking off

ticking off is the present participle and gerund of tick off.

Meaning of tick off

Verb

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

  1. (figuratively, sometimes) To sign an item on a list with a tick mark, especially as a signal that the item has been verified or completed.
    • I ticked off Harry today because he announced he was present.
  2. To list (create or recite a list).
    • In a lengthy missive dispatched the next afternoon, Wheeler ticked off a laundry list of reasons why he could not obey Bragg's order.2010, David A. Powell, Failure in the Saddle, Savas Beatie, →ISBN, page 68
    Synonyms:
    enumerate, recite
  3. (Canada, US, transitive) To annoy, aggravate.
    • It really ticks me off when people don't use proper punctuation.
  4. (Australia, UK, transitive, historically US) To reprimand.
    • Fred was ticked off by the teacher for playing around in class.

Questions about ticking off

What is ticking off the present participle and gerund of?
Ticking off is the present participle and gerund of tick off.

Words near ticking off in the dictionary

  1. ticking bombs
  2. ticking by
  3. ticking clock
  4. ticking clocks
  5. ticking down
  6. ticking off
  7. ticking on
  8. ticking over
  9. ticking past
  10. ticking time bomb
  11. ticking time bombs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ticking off (page history and authors); tick off (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: “ticking off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ticking_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.