telephone tag
A situation in which a person unsuccessfully attempts to contact another person by telephone and leaves a message instead, and in which the second person then unsuccessfully attempts to return the initial call and leaves a message for the first person, and so on as if the two are playing a game of tag in which the most recent person to have been left with a message is now designated as "it" (i.e. as the player now obliged to chase the other and to attempt anew to make contact).
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“We are playing telephone tag and cannot seem to talk.”
“You always play telephone tag with your sister because of the time difference.”
“I have been playing telephone tag with my doctor all morning, leaving messages back and forth without actually speaking.”
“The HR manager and I played telephone tag for three days before we finally discussed the job offer during my lunch break.”
“Despite our best intentions to coordinate the meeting, we spent the entire week playing telephone tag, leaving a trail of missed calls and unanswered voicemails in our wake.”
Last updated August 10, 2026