Kick
verbTo strike or propel something with the foot.
How to spell kick
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce kick
What does kick mean?
- verbTo strike or propel something with the foot.
- nounA thrust with the foot, or a feeling of pleasure or thrill.
Kick in a sentence
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verb
The toddler liked to kick the ball across the garden.
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noun
The goalkeeper saved the penalty kick in the final minute.
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verb
He learned to kick the door shut when his arms were full.
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noun
She got a real kick out of solving the puzzle.
Where does kick come from?
Language of origin: Unknown
The origin of kick is genuinely murky, which is unusual for such a plain everyday word. It first appears in Middle English around the late 1300s as kiken, meaning to strike out with the foot, but no clear parent in Old English has ever been found. Scholars have suggested a link to Old Norse kikna, meaning to bend backwards or sink at the knees, though the connection is far from certain. Some early uses turn up in Scottish and northern texts, which hints at a Norse influence in those regions. Because the trail goes cold so quickly, most dictionaries simply label it of uncertain origin, and the short, blunt spelling has stayed remarkably stable for six centuries.
How the word is built
- kick (single root, no affixes)
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