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Tickling

noun
1.
The act of tickling.  Synonyms: tickle, titillation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tickling" Quotes from Famous Books



... did the fellow on the ranch want to do with that skunk? Something about tickling, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Tickling is also practised with success, the men standing in the edge of a lake among the grass and sedges, where the fish seek cooler water in the heat ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... has been so in every stage of our civilisation. In 1921 it is no more under control than it was in the days of Charlemagne or Attila or Xerxes. Charitable efforts to relieve it have proved as effective as tickling with a feather to cure disease. Or again, high prices and low wages, high wages creating high prices, resented conditions leading to strikes, strikes bringing confusion to both wages and prices alike—these things perplex the most clear-sighted among us, compelling ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... legs, to the very fetlocks, always cleansing the brush from the dust by rubbing it with the currycomb. In the curry-combing process, as well as brushing, it must be applied with mildness, especially with fine-skinned horses; otherwise the tickling irritates them much. The brushing is succeeded by a hair-cloth, with which rub him all over again very hard, both to take away loose hairs and lay his coat; then wash your hands in fair water, and rub him all over while they are wet, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... a hot breath upon his cheek, and a tickling sensation in his ear beyond; Jem's lips seemed to settle themselves against it, and the tickling sensation was renewed, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... smiling, with his head on one side, like a budding lass that is asked to dance, "I know not that I can match our sweet friend's song; moreover, I do verily think that I have caught a cold and have a certain tickling and huskiness in ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... with it so many cares, troubles & calamities, it is one of the greatest admirations, that people should be so earnest and desirous to enter themselves into it. In the younger sort who by their sulphurous instinct, are subject to the tickling desires of nature, and look upon that thing called Love through a multiplying glass, it is somewhat pardonable: But that those who are once come to the years of knowledge and true understanding should be drawn into it, methinks is most vilely foolish, and morrice fooles caps were much fitter ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... harmonious and musically perfect motive of religious yearning (the chorus of the pilgrims) which forms the beginning and the end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many seductive elves. The Venusberg music is probably the most perfect expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual rapture ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... south of England under the name of forest-fly; and to some of side-fly, from its running sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about the groins, of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north, are rendered half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... Protean wit and humor, well and wisely employed. As such, let Punch have his mission; there is ample room for him and his merry doings, without interfering with soberer agencies. Let him go about tickling mankind; it does mankind good to be tickled occasionally. Let him broaden elongated visages; there are many faces that would be improved by horizontal enlargement, by having the corners of the mouth curved upward. Let him write and draw "as funny as he can"; there are dull talking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... my hands improving, he turned upon me his off sardonic eye. 'You'll never improve, old sack-of-beans' (for he had come to address me with a freedom I burned to resent); 'hands! why, you're sawing my mouth off all the time. And your feet "home," and tickling me under my shoulders at every stride—why, I'm half ashamed to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... mistress, kissing my nose, and tickling me gently under the ear, as if she were saying the prettiest things possible. "I am so sorry! I don't know what we are to do with you! But we are going abroad, and we can't take you, you dear old thing! We've such heaps ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... effect is seen in such common experiences as that the sight of food makes the mouth of a hungry man water; that the appearance of a surgical instrument produces a nascent sensation of pain; and that a threatening movement, giving a vivid anticipation of tickling, begets a feeling which closely approximates to the result of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... in this vein, polite, but a trifle absent-minded. Even when he listened to society gossip he was inwardly critical, tickling his sense ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... as arithmetic, clear as the sunbeam, rational as Euclid, a discerning, just, exclusive definition. That he is "capable of laughter," is well enough even for thy deathless fame, O Stagyrite! but equally (so Buffon testifies) are apes and monkeys, horses and hyenas; whether perforce of tickling or sympathy, or native notions of the humorous, we will not stop to contend. That he actually is "an animal whose best wisdom is laughter," hath but little reason in it, Democrite, seeing there are ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... There were three sprawling thumps, a rush of feet, and a tumbling squeeze through the screen door. Then they were on the couch and upon him, with panting yelps of glee. Their hot tongues rasped busily over his face. This was the great tickling game. Remembering his theory of conserving energy, he lay passive while they rollicked and scrambled, burrowing in the bedclothes, quivering imps of absurd pleasure. All that was necessary was to give an occasional squirm, to tweak their ribs now and then, so that they believed his heart was ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... foot—laughing heartily at and with us. He would often tell us the most delightful stories, and then there was no nodding. Sometimes, however, our interest in his wonderful tales became so engrossing that we would forget to do our duty—when he would declare, "No tickling, no story!" When we were a little older, our elder sister told us one winter the ever-delightful "Lady of the Lake." Of course, she told it in prose and arranged it to suit our mental capacity. Our father was generally in his corner by the fire, most probably ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... a strong stick and a light wand. To the end of the former I attached a cord with a noose; this I held in my right hand, keeping the wand in my left. I approached softly, whistling. The animal awoke, apparently listening with pleasure. I drew nearer, tickling him gently with the wand. He lifted up his head, and opened his formidable jaws. I then dexterously threw the noose round his neck, drew it, and, jumping on his back, by the aid of my sons, held him down, though he succeeded in giving ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... was where Bunny Brown made one of his mistakes. He should have let the calf's legs alone. For, no sooner did the little animal feel the tickling of the paint brush on its legs than it gave a loud cry, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope

... elongation of the uvula, or palate, as shown at B, Fig. 147, may arise from the same causes as enlargement of the tonsils. It subjects the individual to a great deal of annoyance by dropping into and irritating the throat. It causes tickling and frequent desire to clear the throat, change, weakness, or entire loss of voice, and difficulty of breathing, frequently giving rise to the most persistent ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... seated on my bed, she would say that I was getting stouter, and would have the proof of it with her own hands, she caused me the most intense emotion; but I said nothing, for fear she would remark my sensitiveness, and when she would go on saying that my skin was soft, the tickling sensation made me draw back, angry with myself that I did not dare to do the same to her, but delighted at her not guessing how I longed to do it. When I was dressed, she often gave me the sweetest kisses, calling me her darling child, but whatever ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... serious part of the supper had been disposed of and the mere palate-tickling period of the dessert had come, I was much interested in observing that the talk—mainly carried on by the elders—was turned with an obviously deliberate purpose upon family history; and especially upon the doings of those ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... having thoroughly satisfied himself as to the nature and properties of the fire-plug, looked into the air after his old enemies the flies, and as there happened to be one of them tickling his ear at that moment he shook his head and whisked his tail, after which he appeared full of thought but quite comfortable and collected. The old gentleman having exhausted his powers of persuasion, alighted to lead him; whereupon the pony, perhaps because he held this to be a sufficient ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the old lawyer then, "do you really mean to say that I made enough noise to frighten the horses? I thought it was Lawrence there tickling ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... d'Amblimont."—"I have reason to be so," said she. "She is unique, I think, for her fidelity to her friends, and for her honour. Listen, but tell nobody—four days ago, the King, passing her to go to supper, approached her, under the pretence of tickling her, and tried to slip a note into her hand. D'Amblimont, in her madcap way, put her hands behind her back, and the King was obliged to pick up the note, which had fallen on the ground. Gontaut was the only person who saw all this, and, after supper, he went up to the little ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... busy, too; busy as I love best of all to be. For on my knee, her arms round my neck and her great mane of glorious wheat-coloured hair tickling my face, is the dearest little creature on God's earth, my other Margaret. If you want to see me when I am intensely proud and happy, you must see me with her at my side walking in the Park or down the Green Gate ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... by provincial prejudices about chivalry. But perhaps he had learned a little self-control. In any case, he had stopped for a second to think, and the wine of love was gone flat. He wished she would release him. Also, her hair was tickling his ear. He waited, patiently, till ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... of the chief butcher, placed the cord under his arms, and drew him up till the ends of his toes scarcely touched the ground. I then secured the rope, and for some moments kept running playfully round him, and tickling his sides, which made him laugh with delight. At length, tired of his posture, he desired me to release him; but I refused, saying, "My dear chief, I have not yet finished my amusement;" after which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... the sand, which ran away, tickling each step she took, her spirits, it must be admitted, went just a little crazily off. The window, you see, where Marylin sewed her buttonholes six days the week, faced a brick wall that peeled with an old scrofula of white paint. Coney Island faced a world of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... face causes trouble. Another source of difficulty is subglottic, owing to inflammation of the mucous membrane in the trachea, which extends upward and involves the cords. The inflammation, passing upward, may easily affect the voice. Such inflammation is discovered by a tickling sensation in the trachea, causing a dry, harsh cough about the third day after a cold has found lodgment "in the head," ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... himself seemed as a stranger, incapable of comprehending what he had done to these people, and why he had done it. He even experienced in himself a certain feeling of offence, which resembled shame at himself in his own eyes. There was a tickling sensation in his throat, and he felt there was something foreign in his breast, as though some dust or ashes were strewn upon his heart, and it throbbed unevenly and with difficulty. Wishing to explain to himself his act, he said slowly ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... fine trout lying there, I played a scurvy trick on them, tickling three big ones; and had a fourth out of water, but was ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... and wondered would it live or die. There came to his mind a curious phrase from CORNELIUS A LAPIDE which said that the lice born of human sweat were not created by God with the other animals on the sixth day. But the tickling of the skin of his neck made his mind raw and red. The life of his body, ill clad, ill fed, louse-eaten, made him close his eyelids in a sudden spasm of despair and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodies of lice falling from the air and turning ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... must have fallen down. Nollie! He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair hair fluffing against his cheek. He seemed to feel that hair tickling his skin; it used to be the greatest comfort he had known since her mother died. At that moment his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a flame; all that abundant secret pride of a father who loves and admires, who worships still a dead wife in the children she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... kind of privacy in devoting her attention, somewhat exclusively, to the senior colonel of the brigade. Knowing how important a matter dining was in his estimation, she soon made a conquest of him, by her judicious care in supplying his wants, tickling his palate, and coinciding in his tastes. She even, for his benefit, called into requisition the unwilling service of old Moodie, who had habitually taken his post behind her, like a sentinel, not troubling himself about the wants of the guests. The colonel might ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... firmly supported. This should be done twice a day, after the morning and afternoon feedings, and always at the same hour. At first there may be necessary some local irritation, like that produced by tickling the anus or introducing just inside the rectum a small cone of oiled paper or a piece of soap, as a suggestion of the purpose for which the baby is placed upon the chamber; but in a surprisingly short time the position is all that is required. With ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... than life itself? and yet for this are none beholden, save to me alone. For it is neither the spear of throughly-begotten Pallas, nor the buckler of cloud-gathering Jove, that multiplies and propagates mankind: but my sportive and tickling recreation that proceeded the old crabbed philosophers, and those who now supply their stead, the mortified monks and friars; as also kings, priests, and popes, nay, the whole tribe of poetic gods, who are at last grown so numerous, as in the camp of ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... hours, he would look out at the passers-by—indulging in the study of man, the proper study of his kind. The chair was what is known as "cane-bottomed," and through its perforations the cat was fond of tickling Punch, as he sat. When Punch felt that the joke had been carried far enough, he would rise in his wrath, chase the cat out into the kitchen, around the back-yard, into the kitchen again, and then, perhaps, have it out with the cat under the sink—without the loss of a hair, the ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... toads were, as if there were no Maggie in existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distance, looking like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area, with an iron grating over him. Still Lucy wished Maggie to enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she would doubtless find a name for the toad, and say what had been his past history; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... new, of strange and rare dishes whose unpronounceable names of themselves frequently are sufficient to discourage those unaccustomed to the art and science of cooking practiced by those whose lives have been spent devising means of tickling fastidious palates of a city ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... our heads. Now the odor of the daturas rises and perfumes all the air, mingled with that of lemon leaves, bruised by the hail. The roses are crowned with midges. Oh sudden springtime! An involuntary smile stretches the corners of my mouth. I'm going to play at tickling my nostrils with the point of a sweet-smelling blade of grass, carefully stretching my neck to avoid the falling drops. But I want Him to follow and admire me. Will He not come out and enjoy ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... society was tickled until he couldn't stand it any longer. And once one of them got St. Vitus's dance, that is frightful convulsions and they were afraid that everything would come out. And since then in their society no more tickling had been allowed. Shall I tickle you a little? I don't understand you, I said, and ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... while we were at breakfast, the odor of June roses wafting in through the open window, the delicious flavor of red-ripe strawberries tickling our palate, and the anticipation of rice griddle-cakes exhilarating us, the ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... askance and said, "What secret was between us could not thy breast hold for one hour, but thou must discover it to this man?" However, I swore to her that I had not told him and excused myself to her and fell to kissing her hands and tickling her breasts and biting her cheeks, till she laughed and, turning to the blind man, said to him, "Sing, O my lord!" So he took the lute ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... ones which are the language of sculpture, painting, and architecture; all this, we believe, is and must be felt, though perhaps indistinctly, by all upon whom poetry in any of its shapes produces any impression beyond that of tickling the ear. The distinction between poetry and what is not poetry, whether explained or not, is felt to be fundamental: and where every one feels a difference, a difference there must be. All other appearances may be fallacious, but the appearance of a difference is a real ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... Wind blew from time to time. It crawled over the gravel, tickling the women's breasts and calves. We stopped before the open grave. The coffin was lowered, and a ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... the bread he would beg for it. It made Joan pause in her destruction of the edibles, not to watch openly, for an instinct told her that the thing to do was to note these by-plays from the corner of one's eye, as Daddy Dan did, and swallow the ripples of mirth that came tickling in the throat. She knew perfectly well that Satan would have it in the end, for of all living things not even Munner had such power over Dan as the black stallion. He maneuvered adroitly. First he circled the table and stood opposite the master, begging with his ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... action is in this case clear. The vibration of the nerve caused by the tickling travels from the foot to the appropriate centre in the spinal marrow, and here gives rise to, or is switched off as, a motor impulse travelling back to the muscles of the leg, causing them to contract. In the injured patient the nervous impulse cannot ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... of prescriptions stamped and evidently written out by the chemist. They are for a "tickling cough," "night sweats," "for light blood spitting," "for violent hemorrhages," "how to inject ergotine tonic for weakness after spitting blood," and "hypodermic injections for violent hemorrhages." Among other doctors' prescriptions pasted in the book there is one for cankered ear in dogs. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... Advice; that holy Father charges him not to entertain himself with such lewd things as Plays, and he very dutifully reads a thousand as fast as he can; nay, scans and weighs 'em, and, no doubt, not without tickling satisfaction, at the present, for all his Saturnine Remarks at last. Now if his Answer to this is, That it belongs to his Office, as a Church-man, and that he could not reprehend the Vices in 'em without reading the Books themselves, I must tell him, That St. Cyprian, nor ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... I suppose I must let you be married one of these days—if we can find a good husband for you. How hot your face is! Lift it up, and let the air blow over it. You won't? Well—have your own way. If talking of business means tickling your cheek against my whisker I've nothing to say against it. Go on, my dear. What's the next question? Come to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... main ascension, to test the currents of the air; but I hope that in this sort of ballooning I may not be interrupted by the remark that interrupted a Fourth of July orator in the West when he was tickling the American Eagle under both wings, delivering himself of no end of platitudes and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of fancy when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on throwing out his ballast, in that way, the Lord knows where he will land." [Laughter.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... your sake! once more! ... But this is a mere tickling that passes through my frame. What torture! What delight! Those are like kisses. My marrow is melting! I ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... upon me next instant, and him, by sheer luck, I managed to serve the same; but I doubt whether either man was stunned; and I was standing ready for them to rise, when I felt myself seized round the neck from behind, and a mass of fluffy hair tickling my cheek, while a shrill voice set up a lusty scream ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... that the crocodile is exceedingly sensitive to tickling; and that it will relax its hold of a man, if he can only contrive to reach and rub with his hand the softer parts of its under side.[1] An incident indicative of some reality in this piece of folklore, once came under my own observation. One morning, about sunrise, when riding across ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... at Westminster with great solemnity, the queen herself helping to put on his ceremonial (mantle), he sitting upon his knees before her with a great gravity. But she could not refrain from putting her hand in his neck, smilingly tickling him, the French ambassador and I standing by. Then she turned, asking at me how I liked him? I answered, that as he was a worthy servant, so he was happy, who had a princess who could discern and reward ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... clothes except a thin white cotton suit, and he could feel the lizard squirming round in his pocket. Tonio didn't like tickling, and ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... and even Legislative Deputies may have each his own opinion, or own no-opinion: but the hardest task falls evidently on Mayor Petion and the Municipals, at once Patriots and Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter down with the one hand; tickling it up with the other! Mayor Petion and Municipality may lean this way; Department-Directory with Procureur-Syndic Roederer having a Feuillant tendency, may lean that. On the whole, each man must act according to his one ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... was shivering when he took his seat at the funnel, but he did not mind that; some day he meant to swim over that dam. Steve still lay motionless in the corner near him, and Isom lifted the slouched hat and began tickling his lips with a straw. Steve was beyond the point of tickling, and Isom dropped the hat back and turned to tell the miller what he had seen in the thicket. The dim interior darkened just then, and Crump stood in the door. Old Gabe stared hard at him without a word of welcome, ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... expressly that a rich man will not need his Ars Amandi, but that it is written for the poor, who may be able to overcome the greed of the hetairai by tickling their vanity. He therefore teaches his readers how to deceive such a girl with false flattery and sham gallantry. The Roman poet uses the word domina, but this domina, nevertheless, is his mistress, not in the sense of one who dominates his heart and commands his respect ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... spies, And seems to point her out where she sits weeping; To whom she sobbing speaks: 'O eye of eyes, Why pry'st thou through my window? leave thy peeping: Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light, For day hath nought to ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... it; nor are the various forms of joyous emotion the sole additional causes. We have, besides, the sardonic laughter and the hysterical laughter, which result from mental distress; to which must be added certain sensations, as tickling, and, according to Mr. Bain, cold, and some kinds of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... men you meet in the woods, as outers or sportsmen, are rather over than under the average in these respects. Perhaps it is because it has been dinned into our ears from early childhood, that an appetite, a healthy longing for something good to eat, a tickling of the palate with wholesome, appetizing food, is beneath the attention of an aesthetic, intellectual man. Forgetting that the entire man, mental and physical, depends on proper aliment and the healthy ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... as Guastavinius adds, Com. in 4. Sect. 27. Prov. Arist. ob seminis abundantiam crebrae cogitationes, veneris frequens recordatio et pruriens voluptas, &c. an earnest longing comes hence, pruriens corpus, pruriens anima, amorous conceits, tickling thoughts, sweet and pleasant hopes; hence it is, they can think, discourse willingly, or speak almost of no other subject. 'Tis their only desire, if it may be done by art, to see their husband's picture in a glass, they'll give anything ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... expecting soon to work up all the curious angles of the Umpire's face. To properly intersperse this amusement he would now and then bestow a good-natured and very sly wink upon a wag who sat at the opposite side of the table, ever and anon tickling with the feather of his quill the nasal organ of the Secretary, who had just melowed away into a delicious nap. Flum proceeded: 'I mean no disrespect to the proficiency, or to the very high position which my learned brother holds in this Convention; but what will be said by the two governments ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... the general circulation will be affected; but it is not due to the action of the heart that the network of minute vessels covering the face becomes under a sense of shame gorged with blood. We can cause laughing by tickling the skin, weeping or frowning by a blow, trembling from the fear of pain, and so forth; but we cannot cause a blush by any physical means—that is, by any action on the body. It is the mind which must be affected. Blushing is not only involuntary, but the wish ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... and yet it means harmony, unity, true satisfaction, and happiness in life. The people still has to learn the great difference between true enjoyment and fleeting pleasure, between real beauty and the mere tickling of ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... broad claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them of spiders—in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more proudly, in the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and, shivering as though someone were tickling her, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... of class distinctions here, too, and the complete democratization of institutions during the last forty years, have destroyed the reverence and sense of mystery by shocking which the European comic paper produces some of its most tickling effects. Gladstone and Disraeli figuring as pugilists in the ring, for instance, diverts the English public, because it gives a very smart blow to the public sense of fitness, and makes a strong impression of absurdity, these two men being to the English public real dignitaries, in the strict sense ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... she said indifferently, in answer to Stephen's startled exclamation, "I thought I felt my sleeve getting very damp and sticky; there's a graze on the shoulder, I think, and the blood has been crawling slowly down my arm, tickling me horribly. Let's ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... Papegot and Huguenot. The one was confident, the other in despair. And some time in the afternoon, worn out by the awful experiences of the last twelve hours, they fell asleep, their heads on their arms, the hay tickling their faces; and, with death stalking the lane beside them, slept soundly ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... beauty to eyes, hair, face, complexion, dress, form, etc., while many savage dances, costumes and postures are irradiations of the sexual act. Thus reticence, concealment, and restraint are among the prime conditions of religion and human culture." (Stanley Hall and Allin, "The Psychology of Tickling," American Journal of Psychology, 1897, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... long it took me to learn the alphabet in this arbitrary manner I do not know. But I remember tackling the a, b, abs, and slowly mastering those short columns. I remember also getting down under the desk and tickling the bare ankles of the big girls that sat in the seat in ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... are quite coster-like. The female twists herself into all manner of ridiculous postures and utters low twittering notes. The cock sits at her side and admires. Every now and then he shows his appreciation of her antics by tickling her head with his beak or by joining his ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... the flame, and the bullet that found a vain target of wood. But to Paul, with an imagination fed by stories of mighty battles, it was like a cannonade. Great guns were trained upon Henry and himself. A thin, fine smoke from the two shots had entered the cabin, and it floated about, tickling his nostrils, and adding, with its savor, to the fever that began to rise in his blood. He dropped to his knees, and was creeping, rifle ready, toward one of the loopholes, eager with the desire to fire back, when Henry's strong hand fell ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... doors, the first proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once compassed, the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others, a strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from within. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the same that tickling is to the touch. Those entertainments and pleasures we most value in life are such as dupe and play the wag with the senses. For if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... bright castle-building, the mother, who was English, of the two derelicts now huddled on the dank deck of the St. Luke, said to the father, who was German, "At any rate these two blessed little bundles of deliciousness"—she had one on each arm and was tickling their noses alternately with her eyelashes, and they were screaming for joy—"won't have to learn either German or ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... that fact so well known to poachers, and known also to many an American schoolboy, namely, that a trout likes to be tickled, or behaves as if he did, and that by gently tickling his sides and belly you can so mesmerize him, as it were, that he will allow you to get your hands in position to clasp him firmly. The British poacher takes the jack by the same tactics: he tickles the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... in like sounding, idle, vaine, and offensive Paranomasies; I blush to fall into the least touch of that kinde: yet at once to shew and reproove that childish folly, It is a vaine of vaine preaching, turning sound preaching into a sound of preaching, tickling mens eares, like a tinckling cymball, feeding them, [Greek: hedusmati kai ouk edesmasi], spoyling the plaine song, with descant and division: what is this but to shew our owne levitie and want of true Art; indeede affecting such a dancing, piperly and effeminate ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... so?" snapped Roger. "Listen, you big overgrown hunk of Venusian space gas—" Roger got no further. Astro grabbed him by the shirt front, held him at arm's length, and began tickling him in the ribs. The three freshmen cadets backed out of the way, glancing fearfully at the giant Venusian. Astro's strength was awesome when seen for ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... which is all but boiling. This has its charms; but I could not relish the Egyptian shampooing. A hideous old blind man (but very dexterous in his art) tried to break my back and dislocate my shoulders, but I could not see the pleasure of the practice; and another fellow began tickling the soles of my feet, but I rewarded him with a kick that sent him off the bench. The pure idleness is the best, and I shall never enjoy such in ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... me! How they've made the place smell! Drat 'em! They've been spilling the fine stuff. Even tobacco don't get rid of the smell! It keeps tickling one's nose so. Oh Lord! But it's bedtime, I guess. [Approaches the lamp ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... sense of humour, and Steve had grown up entirely alone, the cabins of Hollow Hut being scattered, so he sat through the afternoon in a maze of delight. There were snickers and giggles, punching in the ribs and tickling of toes from these children who lived on the border of civilization, for Steve had really gone blindly towards ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... the thick of it. When I was a lad of six or thereabouts they were bringing the king back to his own, and some of the loyal ones were in danger of losing their heads along his proposed line of march. And I have known her to hang whole nights over my brother's bed if he had but a tickling in the throat; and what could one poor ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... orchard. Most of these promoters charge too much for a proper and honest development alone, and too little for the proper development plus the profits and salaries of the promoters. I wish it were not so. I wish the old earth could be made to smile bountiful crops without such expensive tickling, but this is one of the checks and balances that nature places upon ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... wanting breath reminds his lips That between him and his boy-love the mist That comes out of the gods has crept. The tips Of his fingers, still idly tickling, list To some flesh-response to their purple mood. But their love-orison is not understood. The god is dead whose cult was ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa

... sun rose, like a red ball, in the east, suddenly it felt a hole in the middle of its back. It had a creepy, tickling feeling, and then a feeling of tightness and oppression. Oh, it was torture without end! Being bewildered, it closed its eyes; but it still felt as though it were being squeezed and crushed. At last it suddenly noticed that it was free; and when it opened its eyes it was floating through the air ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... were discussing birds, Terry asked them if they used feathers for their hats, and they seemed amused at the idea. He made a few sketches of our women's hats, with plumes and quills and those various tickling things that stick out so far; and they were eagerly interested, as at ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both. And thus they spend The little wick of life's poor shallow lamp In playing tricks with nature, giving laws To distant worlds, and trifling in their own. Is't not a pity now, that tickling rheums Should ever tease the lungs and blear the sight Of oracles like these? Great pity, too, That having wielded the elements, and built A thousand systems, each in his own way, They should go out in fume and be forgot? Ah, what is life thus spent? ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... laughing convulsion that I shall not recover from it for this next three days. Love! that stupid word broke the neck of my famous master, Pietro. But for this tarantula-dance the great hawk-nose would still be sitting as professor at his lecturing desk, and tickling the young goslings with philosophy and wisdom as they perkt up their yellow beaks to catch the crumbs he dropt into them. Marry! old beldam, this monkey-trick of love, this Platonic drunkenness of the soul, was the only ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... against his authority and his person, or in fierce denunciations from the Paris pulpits against his manifold crimes. Next to an exquisite and sanguinary fop, he dearly loved a monk. The presence of a friar, he said, exerted as agreeable an effect upon his mind as the most delicate and gentle tickling could produce upon his body; and he was destined to have a fuller dose of that charming presence ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... wine very moderately; upon which to settle my self, I took a little walk, and returning to my chamber, slept that night without Gito; so great was my care to acquit my self honourably with my mistress, that I was afraid he might have tempted my constancy, by tickling my side. ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... stay here. You can try to recover the revolvers by a civil suit, if you want to risk it in court. Otherwise, make your get-away as fast as you can. I'll admit that your outfit had the josh on me, and had me tickling the wire for the reserves. But just now the town holds two West Point cadets, and two young engineers from the real West, which makes Gridley no place to turn a ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... force expended in stimulation. Discomfort, on the other hand, is that feeling-tone which is directly opposed to pleasure. It may accompany sensations not in themselves essentially painful; as for instance that produced by tickling the sole of the foot. The reaction produced by repeated pricking contains both these elements; for it evokes that sensory quality known as pain, accompanied by a disagreeable feeling-tone, which we have called discomfort. On ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... other places, once blowing a horn in another's ear; and again he is tickling a sleeping brother's foot with a straw. These putti play all the tricks that real babies do, and besides have a goodly list of "stunts" of their own. One thing is sure, to Correggio heaven would not be heaven ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... to give you something for it," suggested Lawrence, and the colonel was explaining that it was merely a tickling in his throat, when, opportunely, Mark ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... struck hard and cold under her slippers. The tickling and trickling of the snow felt like the play of cold light fingers on her skin. Her fear was a body inside her body; it ached and dragged, stone ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... get some. Fish-lines were made of wild hemp, sinew or horse-hair. We either caught fish with lines, snared or speared them, or shot them with bow and arrows. In the fall we charmed them up to the surface by gently tickling them with a stick and quickly threw them out. We have sometimes dammed the brooks and driven the larger fish into a willow basket made for ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... in "tickling the midriff of the English-speaking races" with a single story; and in time he showed himself to be, not only a man of letters, but also a man of action. His humour has been defined as the sunny break of his serious purpose. Horace Walpole has said ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... the flagellation of several pieces of property of either sex. The sight of their beating had the effect of a gentle tickling upon me. The tone of my system was restored. I grew gay and lightsome. I exchanged jokes with the overseer. He appreciated my mood, and gave a farcical turn to the incidents of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... that can be excited by tickling a certain part of the cheek and neck of the adult guinea-pig during the growth and rejoining of the ends of the severed nerve, are said to be repeated with striking accuracy of detail in the young who inherit mutilated toes; but as epilepsy is often due to some one exciting ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... animal. Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely anyone who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling."—SOUTHEY. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... at once that he was not one of the Dusky Men; he was a black-haired man, but white-skinned, and of fair stature, though not so tall as the Burgdale folk. He was busied in tickling trouts, and just as Face-of-god came out from the bush into the westering sunlight, he threw up a fish on to the bank, and looked up therewithal, and beheld the weaponed man glittering, and uttered a cry, but fled not when he saw the spear ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... knee, drinking in a thousand scents and sounds. Myra watched the great humble-bees staggering from flower to flower, blundering among their dew-filled cups. She drew down a lily-stem gently, and guided her brother's hand so that it held one heady fellow imprisoned, buzzing under his palm and tickling it. Clem ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... every natural day, or one day of every ten. One day out of ten amounts to thirty six days and a half in a year. Hence, if we suppose the practice to be persisted in forty years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be devoted to tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it." The same author proposes in a subsequent essay to show, that from the expense of snuff, snuff-boxes, and handkerchiefs, a fund might be formed to pay off the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... Porphyrius Petrovitch commenced at last, "they'll be the death of me, and yet I can't give them up! I am always coughing—a tickling in the throat is setting in, and I am asthmatical. I have been to consult Botkine of late; he examines every one of his patients at least half an hour at a time. After having thumped and bumped me about for ever so long, he told me, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... and method of treatment are easily comprehensible. Pantagruelic burlesque came to him, if not naturally, at any rate by "second nature." He had a strong and sedulously cultivated taste for Rabelaisian humour; his head was crammed with all sorts of out-of-the-way learning constantly tickling his comic sense by its very uselessness; he relished more keenly than any man the solemn futilities of mediaeval doctors, and the pedantic indecencies of casuist fathers; and, along with all these temptations to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... courtiers, and creatures. Here strolled the supple, panther-like Azimoolah, the self-asserted favourite of home society in the pre-Mutiny days. Teeka Sing, the Nana's war minister, had his "bureau" in a tent under the peepul tree there. In that other clump of trees, where an ayah is tickling a white baby into laughter, was the pavilion of the Nana himself, who inherited the Mahratta preference for canvas over bricks and mortar. And here, while the crackle of the musketry fire and the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... tried. Her friends were standing round the bed in misery and helplessness. 'Try her wi' a compliment,' said her husband, in a not uncomic despair. She had genuine humor, as well as he; and an physiologists know, there is a sort of mental tickling which is beyond and above control, being under the reflex system, and instinctive as well as sighing. She laughed with her whole body, and burst the abscess, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... mourned in vain! In mine idolatry what showers of rain Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent! That sufferance was my sin I now repent; 'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain. The hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief, The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud, Have th' remembrance of past joys for relief Of coming ills. To poor me is allow'd No ease; for long yet vehement grief hath been The effect and cause, the punishment ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... letting them go; no pen can describe the anguish that the surrendering of the ten thousand pounds which he had settled on Grace had caused him; but to be told now that the alliance with a lord which he so greedily coveted, and which had been so agreeably tickling him for the last few days, would cost him perhaps two thousand a year, was more than he could bear. He had avoided as much as possible even thinking of the money question. One hundred—two hundred—the shadow of three hundred had fallen for a moment on his mind, but he had successfully ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... fevers, and like them run their course, after which the cough will subside along with the rest of the symptoms. But simply stopping the cough won't hasten the recovery. Most popular "Cough-Cures" benumb the upper throat and stop the tickling; smother the symptoms without touching the cause. Many contain opium and thus load the system with ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... obtained by expression from both sorts of almonds are in their sensible qualities the same. The general virtues of these oils are, to blunt acrimonious humours, and to soften and relax the solids: hence their use internally, in tickling coughs, heat of urine, pains and inflammations: and externally in tension and ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... with her faculty for establishing confidence and settling all things in order, having brought back the smiles of the Court, had suggested the wisdom of relieving the strain and tickling the fancy of the people by some pageant. There was to be a grand review of the troops in the Piazza on the esplanade, in the presence of the Queen and the infant Prince, at which the presentation by Her Majesty to the Admiral Mocenigo of a golden shield, magnificently ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... ICES,[38-*] DESSERTS, &c.—which are served up merely to feed the eye, or pamper palled appetite, that overcome the stomach and paralyze digestion, and seduce "children of a larger growth" to sacrifice the health and comfort of several days, for the baby-pleasure of tickling their tongue for a few minutes, with trifles ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... civilization has been perverted into a huge manufacturing of decrepitude and disease, of poverty and prostitution. The reason we talk so much and listen so eagerly when our magnificent benevolences are the subject is that we do not wish to be disturbed—and that we dearly love the tickling sensation in our ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... up the stairs, wounds, shell shock and all, three steps at a time! He wakened Rosanna by tickling her on ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... this one has plucked him, this one has fricasseed him and that one has eaten him, and the little Riquiqui had nothing at all. Sauce, sauce, sauce," he used to add, tickling the hollow of my hand ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... flinging the book down with a wild gesture which startled them both. 'Was that the man, Adrian Lomax, to spend the only hours of the only life he was ever likely to see—his first thought in the morning, and his last thought at night—in tickling the stomachs of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... witty, when the poor wretch was in the agony of death? This is just John Littlewit in Bartholomew Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet should endeavour to raise pity; but instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh. Virgil never made use of such machines, when he was moving you to commiserate the death of Dido: he would not destroy what he was building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the pursuit of it; yet when he came ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... 1768-1838," mention is made of Lord Charles Somerset complaining of not having slept all night, "not having had a minute's peace through sleeping in 'Cambrik sheets,' the Brussels lace with which the pillows were trimmed tickling his face"! This occurred at Wynyards, the seat of the Earl ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... do not produce kings of that sort nowadays, but King Demos has his own vices, and is as easily blinded and swayed as Ahasuerus. In every form of government, monarchy or republic, there will be would-be leaders, who seek to gain influence and carry their objects by tickling vanity, operating on vices, calumniating innocent men, and the other arts of the demagogue. Where the power is in the hands of the people, the people is very apt to take its responsibilities as lightly as Ahasuerus did his, and to let ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... fairies, and passed on, tickling but not uprooting the weeds in their rows. Fairies are never ill. They have immortal bodies, but no souls. If they see you in pain, they simply think you are flaunting your superiority and your ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... more snow in the streets. The lieutenant looked at the sunbeam, at the familiar furniture and the door, and his first inclination was to laugh. His chest and stomach trembled with a sweet, happy, tickling laughter. From head to foot his whole body was filled with a feeling of infinite happiness, like that which the first man must have felt when he stood erect and beheld the world for the first time. Klimov had a passionate longing for people, movement, ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... Symptoms.—Tickling in the larynx; cold air irritates, and breathing may cause some pain; dry cough; the voice may be altered. At first it may be only husky. In children breathing may be very difficult, after a day or two there may be a light expectoration and finally there may be a loose cough and a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... place, and explode at intervals during the course of some impulsive prayer, or gleeful hymn, or highly enamelled sermon. You may occasionally at such a time, hear two or three in distant pews having a delightful time of it. At first they only stir gently, as if some on were mildly pinching or tickling them. Gradually they become more audible, and as the fire of their zeal warms up, and the eloquence of the minister enflames, they get keener, fiercer, more rapturous; the intervals of repose are shorter, the moments of ecstacy ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... ladies like draped muslin dressing-table covers. Frau Godowska pinned a rose in the centre of her reticule; another blossom was tucked in the mazy folds of a white antimacassar thrown across her breast. The gentlemen wore black coats, white silk ties and ferny buttonholes tickling the chin. ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... forty-four of a more degraded type than the previous one. The cranium was round and bullet-shaped and the hair generally thick. The scalp was not so lax as in the other case, but the furrows were more crooked. By tickling the scalp over the back of the neck the two ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... be out of breath again. You can easily answer in signs; I shall understand. Really and truly now, you don't mind my doing this? Look, there is a little—I think it must be pollen, spilt over your dress,—may I brush it off with my hand? That's not too hard; I'm not hurting you, am I? I'm tickling you, perhaps, a little; but I don't want to touch the velvet in case I rub it the wrong way. But, don't you see, I really had to fasten the flowers; they would have fallen out if I hadn't. Like that, now; if I just push them a little farther down.... Seriously, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... awakened by something tickling your nose; and, looking up, you suddenly discover the toy balloon hovering over you, with its tail in your face, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... wonderment Realize now what the terrible thunder meant. How their mouths water while they are looking At miles of slaughter and sniffing the cooking! Whiffs of delectable fragrance swim by; Spice-laden vagrants that float and entice, Tickling the throat and brimming the eye. Ah! what rejoicing and crackling and roasting! Ah! How the boys sing as, cackling and boasting, The angels' old wives and their nervous assistants Run ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... waterproof sheets—some thirty in all—lie the firers. Beside each is extended the form of a sergeant or officer, tickling his charge's ear with incoherent counsel, and imploring him, almost tearfully, not to ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... Hairy Jocks had never done. The observant Hun promptly recognised that he was faced by a fresh batch of opponents, and, having carefully studied the characteristics of the newcomers, prescribed and administered an exemplary dose of frightfulness. He began by tickling up the Stickybacks with an unpleasant engine called the Minenwerfer, which despatches a large sausage-shaped projectile in a series of ridiculous somersaults, high over No Man's Land into the enemy's front-line trench, where it explodes and annihilates ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... you'll like it,' said Douglas, rolling over on the grass and tickling Bobby's bare legs with a bunch of grass; 'I know the man, and he has an awful temper! Sam told me he thrashed a boy who was taking a bird's nest out of his orchard; and he has a large glass room with skeletons and bits of people's bodies lying all about. I think he likes to get children in there, ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre

... of the child reached the second floor. The wife of the Grandee was standing before the glass arranging her hair. She stopped. A singular shiver ran through her, a certain indefinable, vague emotion like a tickling sensation that one can't with certainty term pleasant or unpleasant. Anyhow it was something that modified that insufferable fever that the frenzy of rage had raised in her heart. She stood motionless ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... would go to sleep In my easy-chair, Wherefore on my slumbers creep— Wherefore start me from repose, Tickling of my hooked nose, Pulling of my hair? Wherefore, then, if thou dost love me, So to words of anger move me, Corking of this face of ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... by young Knickerbocker, the lady's brother, tickling the soles of my feet with a rake, and I started up with such violence from a sound sleep, that I slipped on the inclined plane, rolled down to the edge, and went over into a hogshead of ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... summer sun was still sleeping an Elf came up from below, tickling an oak-tree's foot, skipping like a flea, and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied whispers of American Rails, he answered but with babble of green fields. He is back in his wonted corner now: quite cured, apparently, and ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... the sun on the seaward-looking piazza of the hotel, and coughed in the warm air. She told the ladies, as they came out from breakfast, that she was ever so much better generally, but that she seemed to have more of that tickling in her throat. Each of them advised her for good, and suggested this specific and that; and they all asked her what Miss Breen was doing for her cough. Mrs. Maynard replied, between the paroxysms, that she did not know: it was some kind of powders. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... necessity rather than of pleasure; so also has it happened in this, that oratory was for many ages naked and unpolished, aiming only at expressing the meaning conceived in the mind of the speaker, before any system of rhythm for the sake of tickling the ears was invented. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... He'd feel them running over him, even when he'd spent an hour picking the bed clean of them by the light of the carbide lantern. They scurried with tickling little feet and he ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown

... Rome, 1526) and Andrea Calmo (Rime pescatorie, Venice, 1557). A century later was Parthenius, who published a volume of Halieutica at Naples. This writer has an amusing reference to the art of "tickling" trout as practised in Britain. In Germany, as has been shown, the original little Flemish treatise had a wide vogue in the 16th century, and fishing played a part in a good many books on husbandry such as that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... some of the streams in a very pretty manner. It is with this plant that the Indians make their chuzos, or long tapering spears. Our resting-house was so dirty that I preferred sleeping outside: on these journeys the first night is generally very uncomfortable, because one is not accustomed to the tickling and biting of the fleas. I am sure, in the morning, there was not a space on my legs the size of a shilling which had not its little red mark where the flea ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... of us, two or three of them to one of us, leading us about like go many dancing boars and putting us through our antics. It was offensive, true, but what could poor sea-cunies do? What could old Johannes Maartens do, with a bevy of laughing girls about him, tweaking his nose, pinching his arms, tickling his ribs till he pranced? To escape such torment Hans Amden cleared a space and gave a clumsy-footed Hollandish breakdown till all the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... keep from thinking more of a little tickling in his stomach than he does of the life of ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... sorts, demanded his attention on one side or the other, and every time the moustache acted in the same manner, much to the surprise of the innocent Mr. Hicks. As soon as that beard developed its full powers of tickling, it took effect wherever it touched, and Susan had to protect herself by grabbing the moustache and pushing Mr. Hicks's face, which face seemed able to stand any amount of rough usage. When finally his ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... the rest were almost dying to be out in the kitchen, they conscientiously stuck to their bargain to keep Polly occupied. Only Joel would open the door and peep once; and then Phronsie behind him began. "Oh, I see the sto——" but David swooped down on her in a twinkling, and smothered the rest by tickling her. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... said. "Will you excuse me if I take off my gloves? I want to air my hands." She held up her hands to the breeze; firm, muscular, deadly white hands. "In my professional occupation," she explained, "I am always rubbing, tickling, squeezing, tapping, kneading, rolling, striking the muscles of patients. Selina, do you know the movements of your own joints? Flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, rotation, circumduction, pronation, supination, and the lateral movements. Be proud ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... had before taken shelter. We paddled along the shore of the little bay for some way, trying to find a place hard enough to bear our feet, for the bank was generally soft and muddy fringed by a broad belt of reeds, which the alligators must have found convenient for tickling their snouts with. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston



Words linked to "Tickling" :   exciting, touching, touch



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