Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
😞 To mistreat 💬 To discuss informally ⏳ Still active
to kick around

to kick around

6 7.1
Be alive or still active after a long time
  • phrasal verb
  • Informal
: andar por ahí
  • The flat tax is an idea that has been kicking around Republican circles for 30 years.
  • still kicking around
  • kicked around for years
  • kick around anymore

All that burger Intel kicking around in this big brain of mine.

Examples

  • For several months in late 2002 and early 2003, a bill known as Amber Alert had been kicking around Congress.

    Academic text (2005)

  • Keegan Boone Bryan kicked around Nashville for the better part of a decade, performing solo and as the frontman with country-rockers Plowboy.

    Blog text (34)

  • And, hey, you still got me to kick around.

    Starship Troopers (1997)

  • I kick around from stupid job to job.

    Small Time Crooks (2000)

  • I've been kicking around here for two days' time already.

    Short Circuit 2 (1988)

  • When we first signed Katy, she had been kind of kicking around for a couple of years.

    Katy Perry: Part of Me (2012)

  • Board members agreed to further study the recommendations, including the 9-12 high school, an idea that Clegg said has been kicking around the district for several years.

    Blog text (1)

  • I'd encourage anyone who finds this question kicking around in the back of their mind to check out The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (by Robert Lacey).

    Blog text (24)

  • But so long as the Dems have the filibuster to kick around, they have a handy scapegoat on which to blame their failure to enact policies that are more robustly populist.

    Blog text (29)

  • Despite facing many challenges, he has been kicking around in the business world for over twenty years.

Synonyms

to kick about
vsto kick around
  • UK
8.3

To stay alive or active when people think you will not

last long despite difficulties rather than merely against expectation
to knock about
vsto kick around
  • UK
8.2

To still be around in a place or situation

survive notably long or despite hardship rather than being merely ordinary

Antonyms

to die
∞ 1.0

To stop living and no longer be alive

How Alive

to thrive
241 3.2
to kick around
  • Informal
6 7.1
to survive
∞ 2.7
to die
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

kick around infinitive
kicked around past
kicked around past participle
kicking around present participle
kicks around third person singular

Morphology

kick + around

The sense 'to treat someone badly' is a motivated metaphorical extension of literal 'kick' (physically strike), so a learner who knows 'kick' and 'around' could plausibly infer a meaning of mistreatment. However, the exact nuance of repeated or casual abuse conveyed by 'around' and the idiomatic verb+particle usage are not fully predictable without exposure, making it only partially transparent.

Etymology

Kick around may come from the image of a ball or can that someone has kicked and that keeps rolling; if something still 'kicks around' it means it is still alive or still active.