kittle
Americanverb (used with object)
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to tickle with the fingers; agitate or stir, as with a spoon.
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to excite or rouse (a person), especially by flattery or strong words.
adjective
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ticklish; fidgety.
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requiring skill or caution; precarious.
adjective
verb
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to be troublesome or puzzling to (someone)
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to tickle
Etymology
Origin of kittle
First recorded in 1475–85; earlier kytylle, ketil (compare Middle English verbal noun kitilling, kitlinge “tickling” late Old English citelung, kitelung ); cognate with Middle High German kützeln; akin to Old Norse kitla, German kitzeln “to tickle”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Somethin caught his interest an he turned round and afore you could say jackrobinson he backed up and sot right down in the kittle.
From Time Magazine Archive
I still got our old copper kittle an she's 30 gallons if she's a spoon-full.
From Time Magazine Archive
After a while he woke up and looked around, and says he: 'Here I am again, and here's the creek, and yonder's that old kittle jest as natural as life.
From The Land of Long Ago by Eliza Calvert Hall
He got a good three at the thirty-seventh—the hole was in a very "kittle" place and the green was mighty keen, so that the three was hard to get—and so won the match.
From Fifty Years of Golf by Horace G. Hutchinson
“A month or two ago I would have agreed with ye, but general investors are kittle cattle, and the applications for the new stock are no numerous.”
From The Protector by Harold Bindloss
Pronounced to rhyme with "shall" only the vowel must be very much prolonged. kittled = tickled. myek = make. gairdle cake = girdle cake, i.e. a cake baked on a griddle.
From The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties by Richard Runciman Terry
Bell: What have you heard this fifteen-year, except The bleat of sheep, till Ruth’s voice kittled your ear?
From Krindlesyke by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
