English · Word pair Candidate

alive and kicking

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

Active.

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Keeping the ball alive and kicking.

Last year JIMI HENDRIX sold a staggering four million albums worldwide — proof that interest in this guitar savant is still alive and kicking.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Common questions

What does “alive and kicking” mean?

Active.

Is “alive and kicking” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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