Adjective: tickle
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more tickle |
| Superlative | most tickle |
Sample Sentences
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So ticle be the termes of mortall state,
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And full of subtile sophismes, which do play
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With double senses, and with false debate […] [1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:]
Adjectives inflected like tickle
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
1. From Middle English tiklen, tikelen, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from a frequentative form of Middle English tikken (“to touch lightly”), thus equivalent to tick + -le; or perhaps related to Old English tinclian (“to tickle”). Compare North Frisian tigele (“to tickle”) (Hallig dialect), and tiikle (“to tickle”) (Amrum dialect), German dialectal zicklen (“to excite; stir up”).
2. Alternatively, from a metathetic alteration of Middle English kitelen ("to tickle"; see kittle). Both are ultimately sound-symbolic.