Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To touch (the body) lightly so as to cause laughter or twitching movements.
- v. To tease or excite pleasurably; titillate: suspense that tickles the reader's curiosity.
- v. To fill with mirth or pleasure; delight. See Synonyms at please.
- v. To feel or cause a tingling sensation.
- n. The act of tickling.
- n. A tickling sensation.
- idiom. tickled pink Informal Very pleased; delighted: I was tickled pink by the compliment.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A narrow passage or entrance to a harbor.
- To tease with repeated light touches in some sensitive part, so as to excite the nerves, thereby producing a peculiar thrilling sensation which commonly results in spasmodic laughter, or, if too long continued, in a convulsion; titillate.
- To touch, affect, or excite agreeably; gratify; please or amuse by gentle appeals to one's imagination, sense of humor, vanity, or the like.
- To take, move, or produce by touching lightly.
- To feel titillation: as, his foot tickled.
- To tingle pleasantly; thrill with gratification or amusement.
- To have an impatient or uneasy desire to do or to get something; itch; tingle.
- To produce the sensation of titillation, or the slight nervous excitement of a light touch on some sensitive part.
- Easily moved; unsteady; unstable; inconstant.
- n. A light teasing touch in some sensitive part; a gentle tickling act or action.
Wiktionary
- n. The act of tickling.
- n. A feeling resembling the result of tickling.
- n. Newfoundland A narrow strait.
- v. transitive To touch repeatedly or stroke delicately in a manner which causes the recipient to feel a usually pleasant sensation of tingling or titillation.
- v. intransitive, of a body part To feel as if the body part in question is being tickled.
- v. transitive To appeal to someone's taste, curiosity etc.
- v. transitive To cause delight or amusement.
- adj. Changeable, capricious; insecure.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To touch lightly, so as to produce a peculiar thrilling sensation, which commonly causes laughter, and a kind of spasm which become dengerous if too long protracted.
- v. To please; to gratify; to make joyous.
- v. To feel titillation.
- v. To excite the sensation of titillation.
- adj. obsolete Ticklish; easily tickled.
- adj. obsolete Liable to change; uncertain; inconstant.
- adj. obsolete Wavering, or liable to waver and fall at the slightest touch; unstable; easily overthrown.
WordNet 3.0
- v. touch (a body part) lightly so as to excite the surface nerves and cause uneasiness, laughter, or spasmodic movements
- n. the act of tickling
- v. touch or stroke lightly
- n. a cutaneous sensation often resulting from light stroking
- v. feel sudden intense sensation or emotion
Etymologies
- Middle English tikelen, related to Old English tinclian ("to tickle"). Cognate with North Frisian "tigele" (Hallig dialect), and "tiikle" (Amrum dialect). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English tikelen, perhaps frequentative of ticken, to touch lightly. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The word "tickle" comes from the Middle English tickelen, which it's believed came from ticken, to touch lightly.”
“This defense of evidential decision theory is called the tickle defense because it assumes that an introspected condition screens off the correlation between choice and prediction.”
“Check below and see if any of the week's new titles tickle your fancy.”
“Bolton needs to stop trying to "tickle" Cheney with that moustache ... lol cheryl”
“Both times the infection started with a little 'tickle' in my skin.”
“Then, once home, he touched the spot where the 'tickle' was and I could feel, and he could see, that it was nothing.”
“And thunder and showers and some fog and just enough to kind of tickle the airports once again and make you bring the umbrella for the New York Metropolitan Airports today.”
“Too often we have messages that need to be responded to by a certain date, or they contain actions that, while cannot be acted on immediately, need tickling on certain dates, However, in most email programs it is unwieldy to create and manage "tickle" folders to make sure due dates don't get missed.”
MailTags: Go beyond Smart Folders for Apple Mail — Meandering Passage
“I've still got a 'tickle' and I'm not going to sleep well again tonight.”
“It has a larger range of motion than its predecessor, and five "tickle" spots that have the stuffed animal rolling around in hysterics.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tickle’.
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Pickle and such
Words that end like pickle. Listed here because they're funny (because they end like pickle).
pickle, sparkle, yokel, tinkle, fickle, prickle, trickle, circle, snorkel, ensnorkel, chuckle, buckle and 137 more...
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Typographic Terms
macron, happy, discombobulated, minuscule, grapheme, grotesque, marginalia, diacritical, circumflex, boustrophedon, allograph, analphabetic and 7 more...
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Hmm
Noteworthy, but why?
offal, Guadalupe, enigma, tickle, armada, cognito, spread, caprae, ovolo, homoiconicity, eunoia, Alli and 6 more...
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[Open] Frequentative
“A verb which denotes the frequent occurrence or repetition of an action, as . . . waggle from wag.” — Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia.
Other examples include bobble (bob), bustle (b...dartle, stutter, agitate, dabble, waggle, aid, argue, daunt, expect, excite, espouse, dictate and 77 more...
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Ick!
Inspired by madmouth's Ugh! list.
brick, quick, airsick, lick, rollick, click, crick, kick, candlestick, cowlick, Toothpick, ickle and 17 more...
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happy words
Words that cheer you up, give you happy thoughts and feelings, or just put you in a positive state of mind.
magic, childhood, dawn, smile, kitten, drizzle, friend, beach, free, love, sweet, cozy and 20 more...
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and ...
Words that, as I see it, have some fond connection to the Alice stories through their creation or particular use by Lewis Carroll. I mean to tie them all together with contexty comments!
alice, daisy-chain, white rabbit, waistcoat-pocket, rabbit-hole, marmalade, antipathy, antipode, curtsey, dinah, tea-time, rat-hole and 232 more...
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words that are fun to say
pickle, tickle, thrombocytopenia, symbiosis, mitochondria, buttock, serendipity
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summerwing's Words
proctosigmoidoscopy, horrendous, cichlid, implode, nostalgic, firmament, elucidate, quintet, rhombus, mack, pithy, rambunctious and 304 more...
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Flutter
tuberose, golden apple, apple cider, unicorn, extraordinary, Pleiades, Merope, speckle, glitter, rose, pitter-pat, whale and 314 more...
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Junk
walrus, fascination, broadway, fickle, downturn, bridge, gargle, rotunda, mesh, fab, shortlife, strumming and 304 more...
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RocknRolla (2008)
Words from 2008 'RocknRolla' film.
drip, consent, foothold, bricks and mortar, mortar, councillor, let down, wand, clean out, leg-up, hasty, erect and 115 more...
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Malachi_Constant's Words
triumverate, pandemic, parsnip, delineate, zamboni, parka, laser, swoop, malevolent, benevolent, fracas, tipsy and 372 more...
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Bad Band Names
Mostly supplied by @erinmckean
Thursday Release, Relentless Execution, tickle, neurospast, Facial Asana, Avenged Sevenfold, ambient intimacy, The Csikszentmiha...
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loinfruit's Words
buddy, hungry, hug, want, you, i, mommy, school, ballet, sign, sign language, language and 170 more...
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elizacole's Words
isomorphic, endemic, tmesis, fillip, antedate, avoirdupois, jeremiad, hypnagogic, antediluvian, fuck, reification, raconteur and 251 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tickle.

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