exciting by touching lightly so as to cause laughter or twitching movements
<adj.all>
Tickle \Tic"kle\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Tickled}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Tickling}.] [Perhaps freq. of tick to beat; pat; but cf. also AS. citelian to tickle, D. kittelen, G. kitzlen, OHG. chizzil[=o]n, chuzzil[=o]n, Icel. kitla. Cf. {Kittle}, v. t.] 1. To touch lightly, so as to produce a peculiar thrilling sensation, which commonly causes laughter, and a kind of spasm which become dengerous if too long protracted.
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? --Shak.
2. To please; to gratify; to make joyous.
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw. --Pope.
Such a nature Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow Which he treads on at noon. --Shak.
Comedy is lost without logic, for it is the art of taking that logic and tickling it until it unbends into chaos.
"You enjoy the tickling feeling of becoming an executive," says Kenji Yatomi, president of Tokyo's Wage and Salary Management Consulting Institute, which takes annual surveys of executive compensation.