Idioms

tick-tock

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tick-tock

Used to indicate that time is running out (for someone or something). Alludes to the traditional sound created by the mechanisms within a mechanical clock. Tick-tock, Jeffrey! I need that assignment finished before the end of the day. It's just a matter of time before the whole system collapses again. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

tick-tock

(ˈtɪktɑk)
1. n. a heart. (see also ticker.) My tick-tock is as strong as an ox’s.
2. n. a watch or clock. (Juvenile.) Wind your tick-tock before you forget.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Haswell will have an updated microarchitecture keeping in line with the 'tock' of the tick-tock cadence where tick represents a shrinking of manufacturing process.
Wrapped in white sheets, we hid along the dark, empty corridors, each containing many shadowy doorways from which you could jump out and say: 'Boo!' "We would wait and wait, the silence broken only by the tick-tock, tick-tock, of our big grandfather clock.
for Elizabeth Bishop To break the tick-tock of sleep/ read/sleep, sick with myself, I walked to the Opera Garnier to sit in the high cheap seats of Swan Lake .
its telltale tick-tock death throes prove it's there,
The first story, 'Tick-Tock Time Machine' is a likeable and entertaining story about Sam whose Uncle gives him a clock which operates as time machine, 'It Began with a Tingle' describes the strange lump growing on Brooke's arm, a trout brings things back to life in 'Alive Again', and the collection concludes with 'Evil Eye', a tale of superstition about Tony and what his Greek great-grandmother has left him in her will.
The series is ongoing, and much of it is a tick-tock of the years leading up to his capture, containing previously known facts that are also described in Nextbook Press's brand-new tome by Deborah Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial.
This is the fourth in the series of adventures featuring Barnaby Grimes, who earns a living as a Tick-Tock boy in a version of Victorian England.
He explains that this clock time is at this moment (tick-tock, tick-tock) being undermined and replaced by another temporal empire based on a computer's idea of real time, and this disjuncture opens a crack through which is it possible to see that time, space, and timespace are social constructs.
A carbon copy of a long epoch, a tick-tock that started in
A traditional tick-tock sound and flashing indicators allow students to easily keep music pace.
At Canaan's Edge is a tick-tock history of several different, interwoven stories as they evolved through these three years.
Soon afterwards the alarm will go off and (so we're continually being told by well-meaning scientists) you'll be able to think of very little else but the tick-tock, boom-boom, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiingg of your body clock.
Last week, for example, Sony delayed a production start on Jennifer Lopez starrer "Tick-Tock," an actioner about an FBI agent's frantic quest to identify and defuse bombs set to explode in Los Angeles malls.
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