Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To twitch; cause to twitch convulsively, as the muscles and nerves of animals.
- To move spasmodically; twitch, as a nerve.
- To carp or detract.
Wiktionary
- v. to touch (a body part) lightly so as to excite the surface nerves and cause uneasiness, laughter, or spasmodic movements
- v. to irritate as if by a nip, pinch, or tear
- v. to pinch
- v. make to twitch
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To twitch; to cause to twitch convulsively.
- v. To move spasmodically; to twitch.
WordNet 3.0
- v. irritate as if by a nip, pinch, or tear
- v. touch (a body part) lightly so as to excite the surface nerves and cause uneasiness, laughter, or spasmodic movements
Examples
“But our baths now inflame, vellicate, and distress; and the air which we draw is a mixture of air and water, disturbs the whole body, tosses and displaces every atom, till we quench the fiery particles and allay their heat.”
“Some think these almonds have a penetrating, abstersive quality, are able to cleanse the face, and clear it from the common freckles; and therefore, when they are eaten, by their bitterness vellicate and fret the pores, and by that means draw down the ascending vapors from the head.”
“If any shall undertake to vellicate and pluck some of the branches, rent from the roots and principles of the whole discourse, I shall freely give them leave to enjoy their own wisdom and imaginary conquest.”
“There can be no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular, rouse and vellicate the organs of feeling, causing a sense of pain, which consists in the violent tension or contraction of the muscular fibres.”
“Thus, if you vellicate the throat with a feather, nausea is produced; if you wound it with a penknife, pain is induced, but not sickness.”
“I want this ennui to finally gormandize me, obliterate me, vellicate me until my bones break from the shaking.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘vellicate’.
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Ayatollah's list
Trinkets of lexical goodness.
floccinaucinihili..., quomodocunquize, curmudgeon, illaqueate, ipsissimosity, heterochthonous, hakenkreuz, forisfamiliate, appropinquate, apodyopsis, baryphony, cachinnate and 146 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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touch
palp, tactile, brush, abut, bepaint, tinct, soupcon, graze, stroke, allude, nudge, epicritic and 67 more...
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the lascivious
orgiastic, nymph, breathless, writhe, calypso, Medusa, virago, sapphic, catamite, bisou, buss, succubus and 22 more...
sophy26 "It was nothing much--just a tiny vellicating muscle in the corner of the left eye, like a secret wink--but the annoying thing was that it refused to disappear until an hour or so after the train or plane or whatever it was had been safely caught." The Way up to Heaven by Roald Dahl Oct 31, 2010