Ickle

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An icicle. dialectal
Adjective
  1. 1
    Little. UK, childish

    "Izzum's ickle heart a-beatin' so floppity! Um's own mumsy make ums all right, um's p'eshus Flopit!"

Synonyms

All synonyms
lowmodestpettypunysmallteeny

Example

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"Izzum's ickle heart a-beatin' so floppity! Um's own mumsy make ums all right, um's p'eshus Flopit!"

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English ikil, ykle, from Old English *ġicol, ġiċel (“icicle, ice”), from Proto-West Germanic *jekul, *jikil, from Proto-Germanic *jekulaz (“piece of ice”), diminutive of *jekô (“lump of ice”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁yeg-. Cognate with Low German Jäkel (“icicle”), Danish egel (“icicle”), Norwegian Bokmål jøkel (“glacier, icesheet”), Norwegian Nynorsk jøkul, jøkle (“glacier, icicle”), Faroese jøkul (“glacier”), Icelandic jökull (“glacier”), Swedish jökel (“glacier”) and probably Albanian akull (“ice”) (Gheg okull). Doublet of jokul.

Etymology 2

Childish pronunciation of little.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.