Other forms: kicked, kicking, kicks
To kick is to hit something with your foot. A ball into the net, a stone along the pavement, the bottom of a door that always sticks.
The noun is the same word: a free kick, a penalty kick, one good kick and the door opened. A kick is also a thrill — she gets a kick out of frightening people, and they did it for kicks — and a drink with a kick in it is stronger than it tastes. To kick a habit is to give it up for good. The phrasal verbs go everywhere: kick off means start, kick out means throw someone out, kick in means start working the way painkillers do, kick back means relax. It is a regular verb, kicked and kicking, and to kick yourself is to be furious at your own mistake.
1verbkickTo hit or strike something with the foot.~16%
“He kicked the ball straight over the bar.”
synonyms: boot
2nounblowA blow or strike made with the foot.~78%
“One kick was enough to open the swollen door.”
3nounthrillA feeling of excitement or pleasure.~2%
“She gets a kick out of driving fast on empty roads.”
synonyms: thrill, buzz
4verbquitTo give up a habit or an addiction.~2%
“It took him two years to kick the cigarettes.”
synonyms: quit
5verbrecoilOf a gun, to jerk backwards sharply when fired.~2%
“The old rifle kicks hard against your shoulder.”
synonyms: recoil
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Kick comes from Middle English kyken, to strike out with the foot, which seems to come from Old Norse kikna, to sink at the knees, and keikja, to bend backwards. Those go back to Proto-Germanic *kaikaz, bent backwards, whose own origin is uncertain. The old picture is the body folding and springing rather than the foot landing.
Proto-Germanic
*kaikaz — bent backwards
Old Norse
kikna — to sink at the knees
Middle English
kyken — to strike out with the foot
English, today
kick
Built from
From Middle English kyken (“to strike out with the foot”), from Old Norse kikna (“to sink at the knees”) and keikja (“to bend backwards”) (compare Old Norse keikr (“bent backwards, the belly jutting forward”)), from Proto-Germanic kaikaz (“bent backwards”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Proto-Germanic kī-, kij- (“to split, dodge, swerve sidewards”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵeyH- (“to sprout, shoot”). Compare also Dutch kijken (“to look”), Middle Low German kīken (“to look, watch”). See keek.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA