phone tag
3
5.1
- noun
- /foʊn tæɡ/
- Informal
:
juego de llamadas
- Students often checked their school email accounts on a sporadic basis, and phone messages led to endless rounds of phone tag (leaving messages in response to messages).
- play phone tag
- game of phone tag
- keep playing phone tag
Examples
-
Whenever I try to reach her, we end up in a loop of phone tag, missing each other's calls.
-
We're having ourselves quite a little game of phone tag here.
Fiction book (1996) -
Well been playing phone tag with community relief for a year now.
-
When he calls, we often play phone tag for days running because he doesn't carry a cell phone.
Blog text (34) -
I have the first ever voicemail message that Ariel left me when she was when she was just playing phone tag to like we had.
-
We've been playing phone tag for two weeks because our schedules never match.
-
After several attempts to connect, it feels like we're stuck in phone tag again.
Synonyms
A situation when people keep missing each other's phone calls and leave messages
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound maps a familiar verb/noun 'phone' to the metaphorical game 'tag' (chasing or taking turns), so a learner can infer a back-and-forth or chasing-like interaction involving phones. However, the specific sense of repeatedly missing each other’s calls or leaving messages is a metaphorical extension from physical chasing and not fully predictable without exposure, making the phrase only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Phone tag comes from the picture of the children's game tag plus phone: one person calls, misses the other, the other calls back, and the calls seem to chase each other. That's why phone tag means 'a situation where people keep calling but can't reach each other'.