American football, Ball games, Football, Games, Hobbies, Lifestyle, Sports A placekicker: a player who kicks the football during free kicks, kick offs, field goals, and extra point tries.
Colloquial An unexpected situation, detail or circumstance, often unpleasant, serving as a punchline or clincher.
John wants to climb the wall, but the kicker is that it is thirty feet tall.
Tuition is free; the kicker is that mandatory room and board costs twice as much as at other colleges.
2 more examples
If the coffee is currently being spilled, I can't unspill it. And here's the kicker. You can't change the future, because it hasn't happened yet.2016, David Zelman, If I Can, You Can: Transformation Made Easy:
They want me gone, wait for the kicker / Bury me now and I only get bigger2017, “Gyalchester”, in More Life, performed by Drake:
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Business, Finance An enticement for investors, e.g. warranty added to the investment contract.
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Card games, Poker An unpaired card which is part of a pair, two pair, or three of a kind poker hand.
Jill's hand was two pair, aces and sevens, with a king kicker.
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Journalism, Media Small text above a headline that indicates the topic of the story.
Hammers are, in essence, reverse kickers. Instead of being set in smaller type like kickers, hammers are set in larger type than headlines.1981, Harry W. Stonecipher, Edward C. Nicholls, Douglas A. Anderson, Electronic Age News Editing, page 104:
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Journalism, Media The last one or two paragraphs of a story.
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Journalism, Media Synonym of lead-in (“start of photo caption”).
[…] international news and politics, and heavy on the light stuff: local news, entertainment and merry little kickers […]1984, Media Report to Women, volume 12, page 46:
Instead, a reporter can carve out a niche as an entertainment/community reporter, thus concentrating their efforts on filing feature stories for the E block, where the kickers are slated. Kickers are feel-good pieces placed at the end of the newscast to leave viewers in a good mood […]2013, Frank Barnas, Ted White, Broadcast News Writing, Reporting, and Producing, page 77:
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Media, Printing, Publishing A device that periodically displaces a newspaper from the print production line, to aid in gathering the newspapers into fixed-size bundles.
In a printing machine, the combination of a kicker mechanism for displacing a newspaper […]1931, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, page 490: