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Glite Dictionary
telephone tag

telephone tag

4.2
A situation when people keep missing each other's phone calls and leave messages
  • noun
  • Informal
translation icon : juego del teléfono
  • After a long game of telephone tag, they finally managed to set a meeting time.
  • play telephone tag

Examples

  • If you keep leaving messages, you'll end up in an endless cycle of telephone tag.

  • Many people dislike playing telephone tag because it leads to frustration when trying to connect.

  • "Miles," he said, "we seem to be playing telephone tag."

    Fiction book (1992)

  • His game of telephone tag with Central State went on for a couple more hours, unpromisingly.

    Fiction book (1990)

Synonyms

phone tag
vstelephone tag
  • Informal
3 5.1

People keep calling each other but always miss the calls

is the same meaning but uses a longer, more formal written form

Surface Forms

telephone tag singular
telephone tags plural

Morphology

telephone + tag

The phrase links the literal 'telephone' with the game 'tag' used metaphorically to describe people 'chasing' each other with missed calls; a learner who knows both words can plausibly infer it involves repeated, unsuccessful telephone attempts. However, the use of 'tag' as a metaphor for alternating missed calls is not strictly compositional and requires a figurative mapping, so the meaning is only partially predictable without prior exposure.

Etymology

Telephone tag comes from the idea of a phone (telephone) and the children's game tag, where players chase each other. When two people keep calling and just miss each other, like they are chasing on the phone, they are playing telephone tag, so the phrase means 'a series of missed calls and messages'.