touch and go
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.
Origin of touch and go
1Other definitions for touch-and-go (2 of 2)
risky; precarious: a touch-and-go descent down the mountain.
hasty, sketchy, or desultory.
Origin of touch-and-go
2Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use touch and go in a sentence
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.
The Chequers | James RuncimanSaved me a bothering touch-and-go play to get you out here and seem innocent.
The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories | Owen Wister“Ay, if we are once free,” muttered the master, who was not at all of the touch-and-go school.
Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships | W.H.G. KingstonI was glad that when riding this road in the dark I had not realised it was in quite such a touch-and-go condition.
Through the Land of the Serb | Mary Edith Durham
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.
Stories of the Ships | Lewis R. Freeman
British Dictionary definitions for touch and go
(touch-and-go when prenominal) risky or critical: a touch-and-go situation
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cultural definitions for 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.”
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Other Idioms and Phrases with touch and go
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]
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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