touch and go
adjective

- extremely uncertain or risky

- uncertain as to the outcome; likely to succeed or fail by a very narrow margin

- risky or critical; describing a situation in which the outcome is uncertain and could easily go wrong

Merriam-Webster, Collins English Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary

—
PHRASE ORIGIN

The story of touch and go begins not on land, but at sea — and the image is surprisingly physical.

In the age of sail, navigating shallow coastal waters was one of the most nerve-racking tasks a captain faced. When a ship's keel briefly scraped the seabed — touching bottom — but the vessel kept enough momentum to continue moving, the crew called it "touch and go." One second more, one degree less of wind, and the ship would have been stuck fast or wrecked. It was the difference between disaster and survival measured in inches.

The earliest print record in this precarious sense dates to The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine in 1830, though the phrase was already in spoken use before that. Admiral W. H. Smyth, in his Sailor's Word-Book (1867), defined it plainly: "Touch-and-go, said of anything within an ace of ruin; as in rounding a ship very narrowly to escape rocks."

In modern aviation, a touch-and-go landing is a training manoeuvre: the pilot lands, immediately applies full power, and takes off again without stopping — deliberately courting the borderline between safe and unsafe.

The essential idea is that contact so brief that catastrophe is skirted, not suffered.

Helga & Paul Smith

—
TOUCHY IDIOMS

- A soft touch = an easily persuadable person

- Touch base = to talk to or connect with someone after a while

- The final touch = the final details that complete or finish a job

- Touch a nerve with someone = make someone upset

- Magic touch = the ability to do something excellently

—
SYNONYMS

a close call, a close-run thing, a close shave, a coin flip, a dicey business, a near miss, a near thing, a thin line, balancing act, barely escaped, borderline, by a whisker (the skin of one's teeth, a hair's breadth), chancy, cliffhanger, critical, cut it fine, dangerous, dicey, down to the wire, edgy, fraught, going out on a limb, hair-raising, hairy, hanging by a thread (in the balance), hazardous, high-stakes, iffy, in danger (jeopardy, the balance, the lap of the gods, the nick of time), nerve-racking, on a knife/razor’s edge, on shaky ground (the brink, the edge, thin ice), perilous, playing with fire, precarious, pretty close, risky, skating on thin ice, slim odds, teetering, tense, tight squeeze, TOUCH AND GO, too close for comfort, treacherous, unsafe, up in the air, walking a tightrope, wobbly

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“It was TOUCH AND GO as to whether we’d get to the airport in time to catch our flight.”

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"The current dispute between the U.S. government and some AI companies could divide the AI industry into a PLURIVERSE of AI camps, including European AI labs, Chinese tech giants, open research communities."

—
PLEASE SUPPORT US

On evenings and weekends, I research and write your daily OWAD newsletter together with Helga (my lovely wife and business partner) and our eagle-eyed daughter Jennifer. It remains FREE, AD-FREE, and ALIVE thanks to voluntary donations from appreciative readers.

If you aren’t already, please consider supporting us — even a small donation, equivalent to just 1-cup-of-coffee a month, would help us in covering expenses for mailing, site-hosting, maintenance, and service.

Just head over to DonorBox:
https://donorbox.org/owad-q4-2023-5

or

Bank transfer:
Paul Smith
IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40

Important: please state as ’Verwendungszweck’: “OWAD donation” and the email address used to subscribe to OWAD.

Thanks so much,

Paul
(OWAD Founder)