touch and go

Meanings

1. Characterized by brief and transitory encounters.
2. Precarious, delicate, risky, sensitive; of uncertain outcome (by analogy with a ship in shallow water).

1. To briefly encounter before moving on.
2. To touch bottom lightly and continue without damage, as a vessel in motion.
3. To perform a touch-and-go landing.

Etymology

The original sense, now obsolete, seems to have been that of brief encounters. The subsequent nautical sense then gave rise first to the abstract sense (indicating a hazardous situation) and later, by physical analogy, to the aeronautical sense.