tickle
/ˈtɪk(ə)l
/- She squealed with laughter as I started tickling her.
- I smiled as we kissed, her touch tickling me slightly.
- I collapsed in laughter and began tickling him in earnest.
Synonyms
- It feels like a strange prickling sensation, and it tickles around my arms.
- I wanted him to stop, but it tickled so much that I couldn't help but laugh.
- On some days though when you step outside your throat tickles slightly and your eyes water, often so little that you barely realize it.
- We arrived in Clapham, a cheerful start, with screeching children playing on the beck banks as a teacher splashed them while pretending to show how to tickle a trout.
- Forget any romantic notions of setting horse hair traps for rabbits in the pale dawn and then settling down to tickle trout from the mossy banks of the stream.
- It was hard to say why anymore - at first it had been a joke, a game, and then because something about his friend's reserve tickled his curiosity.
- To tickle your taste buds, the food festival offers a wide range of dishes, including pastas, salads, soups, desserts and pizzas.
- These spicy and saucy ribs will tickle your taste buds and keep you coming back for more.
Synonyms
- ‘We've found that people are tickled by the idea of seeing such a familiar, everyday product used in a novel way,’ says Miller.
- I was tickled by the idea of making a film for posterity.
- I was always thinking that you were already my brother-in-law, and the idea just tickled me.
Synonyms
- He seemed glad of the company after a long, dark winter and was soon swimming through my legs and even accepting a tickle under the chin.
- She felt his soft kiss and the tickle of his long hair on her cheek.
- He'd make humorous, taunting faces or just out-do her hits with an unserious blow or a tickle.
Synonyms
- The point barely touched her skin; she only felt a small tickle.
- It's a barely noticeable sensation, just a whisper of a tickle.
- I can't remember if Holly tucked both arms under and anyway, what if he wanted to itch a tickle on his nose?
Phrases
be tickled pink (or to death)
tickle the ivories
Origin
Middle English (in the sense 'be delighted or thrilled'): perhaps a frequentative of tick1, or an alteration of Scots and dialect kittle 'to tickle' (compare with kittle1).
tick from Middle English:
The tick shown as a ✓ first meant ‘to pat, touch’ and goes back to medieval English, where it was related to tickle (Middle English), although its history is obscure. This is also the tick used to imitate the sound of a clock, and in ticker, or the heart, a sense first used in the USA at the end of the 19th century. The ‘bloodsucking parasite’ sort of tick is a different, older word which gives us the expressions tight as a tick or as full as a tick for ‘very drunk’, both of which refer to the way ticks swell as they gorge themselves on blood. Both forms of the phrase have the additional meaning ‘be full after eating’, but the more recent tight as a tick plays on two senses of tight, which can mean both ‘drunk’ and ‘stretched taut’. When you buy on credit or on tick, you are using yet another word, which is an abbreviation of ticket. The ticket in question is an IOU promising to pay the money due, but there is also the suggestion of a pun on the reputation of moneylenders as ‘bloodsucking parasites’. Both on tick and on the ticket date back to the 17th century.