Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A light, sharp, clicking sound made repeatedly by a machine, such as a clock.
  • noun Chiefly British A moment.
  • noun A light mark used to check off or call attention to an item.
  • noun Informal A unit on a scale; a degree.
  • intransitive verb To emit recurring clicking sounds.
  • intransitive verb To function characteristically or well.
  • intransitive verb To count or record with the sound of ticks.
  • intransitive verb To mark or check off (a listed item) with a tick.
  • noun Credit or an amount of credit.
  • noun Any of various small bloodsucking arachnids of the order Ixodida that are parasitic on terrestrial vertebrates. Many species transmit diseases, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease.
  • noun Any of various usually wingless insects that resemble a tick, such as a sheep ked.
  • noun A cloth case for a mattress or pillow.
  • noun A light mattress without inner springs.
  • noun Ticking.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One of many different kinds of mites or acarines which are external parasites of various animals, including man.
  • noun Hence With a qualifying term, a member of the dipterous family Hippoboscidæ.
  • noun The tick-bean.
  • noun Credit; trust: as, to buy on tick.
  • noun A score, account, or reckoning.
  • To touch or tap something lightly, or with a small sharp sound; tap slightly, as a bird when picking up its food; peck.
  • To emit a slight recurring click, like that of a watch or clock.
  • To touch lightly, as in the game of tag or tig; tag.
  • To place a dot on, over, or against; mark with or as with a tick or dot: as, to tick one's i's in writing; to set a dot against, as in checking off the items in a list or catalogue; check by writing down a small mark: generally with off.
  • To note or mark by or as by the regular clicking of a watch or clock.
  • noun The cover or case of a bed, which contains the feathers, hair, corn-shucks, moss, or other materials conferring softness and elasticity.
  • noun Ticking.
  • To buy on tick or credit; live on credit.
  • To give tick or credit; trust one for goods supplied, etc.
  • noun A slight touch or tap; a pat.
  • noun A slight sharp sound, as that made by a light tap upon some hard object; also, a recurring click or beat, as of a watch or clock.
  • noun The game known in the United Kingdom as tig, and in the United States as tag. See tag.
  • noun A dot or slight mark: as, the tick over the letter i; the tick used in checking off the items in a list or catalogue.
  • noun A small spot or color- mark on the coat of an animal.
  • noun A speck; a particle; a very small quantity.
  • noun The whinchat.
  • noun In a horse, the malady or vice now called cribbing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The cover, or case, of a bed, mattress, etc., which contains the straw, feathers, hair, or other filling.
  • noun Ticking. See Ticking, n.
  • intransitive verb To go on trust, or credit.
  • intransitive verb To give tick; to trust.
  • noun Any one of numerous species of large parasitic mites which attach themselves to, and suck the blood of, cattle, dogs, and many other animals. When filled with blood they become ovate, much swollen, and usually livid red in color. Some of the species often attach themselves to the human body. The young are active and have at first but six legs.
  • noun Any one of several species of dipterous insects having a flattened and usually wingless body, as the bird ticks (see under bird) and sheep tick (see under sheep).
  • noun a small bean used for feeding horses and other animals.
  • noun (Bot.) a name given to many plants of the leguminous genus Desmodium, which have trifoliate leaves, and joined pods roughened with minute hooked hairs by which the joints adhere to clothing and to the fleece of sheep.
  • transitive verb To check off by means of a tick or any small mark; to score.
  • noun A quick, audible beat, as of a clock.
  • noun Any small mark intended to direct attention to something, or to serve as a check.
  • noun (Zoöl.), Prov. Eng. The whinchat; -- so called from its note.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English tik, light tap.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for ticket.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English tike, tik, perhaps from Old English *ticca.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English tikke, probably from Middle Dutch tīke, ultimately from Latin thēca, receptacle, from Greek thēkē; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From ticket

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English tek ("light touch", "tap")

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English ticia ("parasitic animal"), from West Germanic, compare Dutch teek, German Zecke.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English tike, probably from Middle Dutch, from Latin theca ("cover")

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Examples

  • The house rang with the wreak and wrack of wood, and that _tick tick tick_ of the heating system.

    Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 2002

  • The house rang with the wreak and wrack of wood, and that _tick tick tick_ of the heating system.

    Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 2002

  • Every creature on the planet has it's place in nature, but the tick is an abomination.

    Rain, Rain, Go Away 2009

  • Every creature on the planet has it's place in nature, but the tick is an abomination.

    Archive 2009-03-01 2009

  • You know, looking at the things that people like Angelica here say and write, and from that making inference as to what makes their noggins tick, is like turning over a rock where some dead thing is moldering underneath.

    Matthew Yglesias » Did Haiti Form a Pact With the Devil? 2010

  • Gottschall's notion that fiction presents the reader (the critic being a more skilled reader) with the opportunity to scrutinize characters as if they were real people whose "craniums" can be opened to discover "what makes them tick" is no doubt widely shared.

    Experimental Fiction 2010

  • Alas, the mystery of what makes people tick is inherently difficult to investigate in a test tube.

    Sowell on Math and Economics, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • The black-legged tick is responsible for spreading Lyme disease, but can also spread other tick-borne illnesses.

    Lyme Disease 2010

  • Tourette Syndrome is when a person is incapable of controlling what they say or do, and this is known as a tick.

    Murray Rosenbaum: TEDxYouthDay 2011 Murray Rosenbaum 2011

  • One of the things that makes Morelos's heart tick is education and it is known as a center of learning, second to Mexico City.

    The State Of Morelos - An Overview 2008

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