Touch down
Meaning
To land on the ground, typically referring to an aircraft, or to score points in American football by entering the opponent's end zone with the ball.
Origin
In the nascent, bruising sport of American football, the scoring play we now call a 'touchdown' was once a far more literal act. Players didn't just need to carry the ball over the goal line; they were required to physically 'touch down' the ball onto the ground within the opponent's end zone. This definitive moment of earth-contact cemented the term in the sport's vocabulary, underscoring the raw physicality of the score. As the age of flight dawned in the early 20th century, the vivid imagery of a controlled descent ending in contact with the ground made 'touch down' a perfectly natural, and equally critical, descriptor for an aircraft's landing.
Examples
- The plane is expected to touch down at Heathrow Airport in approximately twenty minutes.
- The wide receiver managed to touch down for a crucial score, winning the game in the final seconds.