A touchdown is the main way to score points in American football. A team scores a touchdown by carrying the ball across the opponent's goal line or catching a pass in the end zone at the far end of the field. Think of it like reaching home base in baseball, except scoring a touchdown earns your team six points (with a chance to kick for one more or run a play for two).

The moment a player crosses the goal line while holding the ball, referees signal the touchdown by raising both arms straight up in the air. The crowd roars, teammates celebrate, and the scoreboard lights up. Some of the most exciting moments in sports happen when a player makes a desperate dive across the goal line just before being tackled, or when a receiver catches a pass in the corner of the end zone with seconds left on the clock.

Outside of football, people sometimes use touchdown to describe arriving somewhere successfully, like when a pilot announces, “We've touched down in Chicago,” meaning the airplane has landed safely.