Tinkle
name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A light metallic sound, resembling the tinkling of bells or wind chimes. countable, uncountable
"The Man's Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little stones and loose earth falling off the roadway, and the sliding roar of the man and horse going down."
- 2 a light clear metallic sound as of a small bell wordnet
- 3 A telephone call. UK, countable, informal, uncountable
"Give me a tinkle when you arrive."
- 4 An act of urination. countable, euphemistic, informal, uncountable
- 5 Urine. countable, euphemistic, informal, uncountable
- 1 To make light metallic sounds, rather like a very small bell. intransitive
"The glasses tinkled together as they were placed on the table."
- 2 make or emit a high sound wordnet
- 3 To cause to tinkle. transitive
- 4 To indicate, signal, etc. by tinkling. transitive
"The butler tinkled dinner."
- 5 To hear, or resound with, a small, sharp sound.
"And his ears tinkled, and the colour fled."
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- 6 To urinate. informal, intransitive
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"When they gave her the piggy bank, the first thing Laura did was put in a couple of coins and shake it to hear it tinkle."
Etymology
From Middle English tinclen, equivalent to tink + -le (frequentative suffix). Cognate with West Frisian tinkelje (“to tinkle”), Dutch tinkelen (“to tinkle”), German Low German tinkeln (“to flicker, glitter, sparkle”).
Related phrases
More for "tinkle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.