Word.ws English Dictionary

ticking over

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

Meaning of tick over

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) to idle (to run at a slow speed, or out of gear).
  2. (idiomatic, of) To run smoothly and without problems.
    • While the boss was on holiday, the deputy made sure things were ticking over in the firm.

Questions about ticking over

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

Words near ticking over in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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