kicking and screaming
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
strongly resisting or protesting something
Literally: physically struggling and crying out in pain or fear
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Blonde Michelle says: ‘ My boyfriend Fisher Stevens will have to drag me kicking and screaming out of the house, but once I get on holiday I'm sure I'll enjoy it.
‘ Even if we have to drag him kicking and screaming before the Lord.
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). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “kicking and screaming” mean?
strongly resisting or protesting something Literally: physically struggling and crying out in pain or fear
Is “kicking and screaming” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.