Kickoff

How to spell kickoff

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce kickoff

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does kickoff mean?

1. nounThe kick that starts a game of football or similar sport, or the moment play begins.
2. nounThe beginning or formal launch of an event, project, or campaign.

Kickoff in a sentence

• The kickoff is scheduled for three o'clock on Saturday afternoon.

• The marketing team booked a venue for the campaign kickoff next month.

• Fans arrived early to grab seats well before kickoff.

• Every new project begins with a kickoff meeting to set goals.

Where does kickoff come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound formed from the English verb 'kick' and the particle 'off'. The verb 'kick' is first recorded in late Middle English, around the 1300s, and its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain; many scholars suspect a Scandinavian source, possibly related to an Old Norse word for striking or thrusting, though the trail is not clear. 'Off' is a native Old English word that simply meant 'away from' and came to carry the sense of setting something into motion. The two were joined in the language of football, where a 'kick off' literally meant kicking the ball away from the centre spot to begin play. Over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries the phrase hardened into the single noun 'kickoff', then spread well beyond sport to mean the launch of any event or campaign. The spelling trap is the doubled letters where the parts meet: a 'ck' from 'kick' butting straight up against the 'off', giving the unusual run of consonants.

How the word is built

• kick (to strike with the foot)
• off (away, into action), a closed compound noun