The Collaborative International Dictionary
kick off \kick` off"\ v. i. (Football) To kick the football from the center of the field to start a football game or to resume it after a score; as, they kicked off at two o'clock.
kick off \kick` off"\ v. t. to begin; to commence; as, they kicked off the rally with a playing of the national anthem.
Syn: begin, commence, start.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 (context ambitransitive English) To make the first kick in a game or part of a game. 2 (context idiomatic ambitransitive English) To start; to launch. 3 To dismiss; to expel; to remove from a position. 4 (context idiomatic colloquial euphemistic English) To die or quit permanently. 5 (context idiomatic English) To shut down or turn off suddenly. 6 (context US idiomatic ranching slang English) To force the weaning of a bovine cow's calf by restricting the calf's access to its mother's udders. Used figuratively or literally. 7 (context UK idiomatic colloquial English) To be overcome with anger, to start an argument or a fight.
WordNet
v. commence officially [syn: inaugurate]
Wikipedia
The Kick Off franchise is a series of football simulation computer games, first released in 1989. Kick Off, the first game of the series, was designed by Dino Dini and released by Anco for the Amiga and the Atari ST in 1989. The game was received well by the games industry at the time and won awards.
After the release of Kick Off several sequels were released. Player Manager was released in 1990. The game was the first game to combine a management environment (including tactics, league play, transfers, and detailed player attributes) with a football game engine (based on that of Kick Off). Kick Off 2 was released in 1990 as a sequel to Kick Off. The game introduced a number of new features as well as several small alterations.
In 1992, Dino Dini left Anco and signed a contract for Virgin Games, which released Goal! in 1993. Anco released several further editions of the Kick Off series between 1994 and 1997, but these games had little in common with Kick Off and Kick Off 2. In 2001–2003, the KOA collaborated closely with Anco developer Steve Screech in an attempt to relaunch the Kick Off and Player Manager series. Kick Off 2002 was released. Anco started to work on another sequel Kick Off 2004 which reached beta status. The attempt came to a halt when Anco closed in 2003.
Kick Off is a football magazine and website published by Media24. Its main focus is on domestic South African competitions including the Premier Soccer League.
Kick Off is a weekly Australian football (soccer) television series that airs on Fox Sports during the A-League season. It is currently hosted by Tara Rushton and features Andy Harper and a weekly special guest.
Usage examples of "kick off".
She'd said the exact words she needed to in order to kick off my protective streak.
The present was a jade artifact so important to China that her leaders were willing to kick off a trade war and self-destruct their own economy over it.
Patterns of blue and green flowers covered them, so lovely she wanted to kick off her shoes and run dancing barefoot through the spring meadows they showed.
More of that in the winter when the sleepers kick off from exposure and shit.
His hat continued to be a yachting cap, worn on the back of his head, but his shoes were heavy leather sandals which she designed and which he could kick off when he wished to dance.