Tickle

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈtɪkl̩/

Definitions

1. To touch someone lightly causing laughter or twitching movements of the body
2. To stimulate a person's skin in a light manner that produces laughter or slight movements of the body
3. To lightly touch a person's skin in such a way that induces laughter or involuntary movements of the body

Etymology: Tickle is one of those words whose ancestry dissolves the closer you look. Middle English had "tiklen" and "tikelen," and scholars cannot agree on where they came from. One candidate is a frequentative form of the Middle English "tikken," meaning "to touch lightly," which would make "tickle" a repeated, gentle version of "tick," the small light touch. Another is that the word is a metathetic reshuffling of "kitelen," an older word with the same sense, where the consonants swapped places. A third possibility links it to Old English "tinclian." Related forms turn up in North Frisian dialects and in German dialect "zicklen," meaning "to excite or stir up." Nothing in the record settles which route is correct, and the uncertainty runs deep. Linguists generally treat the word as sound-symbolic, meaning its shape imitates the quick, flickering sensation it describes, so similar-sounding words in several languages may have arisen independently. The word's sound seems to do much of the work of its meaning, which is why it resists a single clean ancestor.

Synonyms: tease, stimulate, arouse, excite, provoke

Antonyms: sadden, displease, bore, dull, depress