Kittle
adj, name, verb ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To tickle, to touch lightly. Northern-England, Scotland, transitive
- 2 To bring forth young, as a cat; to kitten; to litter. Northern-England, Scotland, intransitive
- 1 Ticklish. Northern-England, Scotland
- 2 Not easily managed Northern-England, Scotland
- 1 A surname. countable, uncountable
- 2 An unincorporated community in Fulton County, Arkansas, United States. countable, uncountable
- 3 A village in Pennard community, City and County of Swansea, Wales (OS grid ref SS5789). countable, uncountable
Etymology
From Middle English kitelen, from Old English citelian (“to tickle”), from Proto-West Germanic *kitilōn, from Proto-Germanic *kitilōną, frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *kitōną (“to tickle”), from Proto-Indo-European *geyd- (“to stick, jab, tickle”). Cognate with Dutch kittelen, kietelen (“to tickle”), Low German kettelen, ketelen (“to tickle”), German kitzeln (“to tickle”), Icelandic kitla (“to tickle”), Swedish kittla, kittsla, Danish kilde and perhaps Old Armenian կիծ- (kic-, “to sting, bite”), but note that many such words are sound-symbolic. Compare tickle.
From Middle English kitelen, from Old Norse kjetla (“to bring forth young”), equivalent to kit + -le.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.