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touch and go
1noun
- a precarious or delicate state of affairs:
It was touch and go there for a while during the operation.
- quick action or movement:
the touch and go of city traffic.
touch-and-go
2[ tuhch-uhn-goh ]
adjective
- risky; precarious:
a touch-and-go descent down the mountain.
- hasty, sketchy, or desultory.
touch and go
adjective
- touch-and-go when prenominal risky or critical
a touch-and-go situation
touch and go
- Uncertain or precarious: “The doctors told the patient that, even though her disease was in remission, from now on it was touch and go.”
Word History and Origins
Origin of touch and go1
Origin of touch and go2
Idioms and Phrases
Extremely uncertain or risky, as in It was touch and go after the surgery; we were not sure he'd survive it , or It was touch and go but they finally gave me a seat on the plane . This idiom implies that a mere touch may cause a calamity. [Early 1800s]Example Sentences
START ratification is touch-and-go, too, since, being a treaty, it requires a two-thirds majority to pass.
And still the grizzled old skipper would go on, though it was touch-and-go every time a sequence of strong seas came howling down.
Saved me a bothering touch-and-go play to get you out here and seem innocent.
“Ay, if we are once free,” muttered the master, who was not at all of the touch-and-go school.
I was glad that when riding this road in the dark I had not realised it was in quite such a touch-and-go condition.
Watching our chances, the rest of us swarmed up between swells, but it was touch-and-go all the time and took a long while.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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