Tippy-tap
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A step that makes a clicking sound.
"[…] she trots through the halls of her mansion jiggling in her frilly dresses and making tippy-taps with her high heels."
- 2 A light and rapid tap
"Why do TV news anchors always do that thing at the end of the show when they gather their papers in a neat pile, stand them on end and give them a little double tippy-tap?"
- 3 A gourd or small jerry can filled with water and attached to a piece of wood at ground level, such that stepping on the wood tips the gourd or can to release a stream of water through a small hole.
"Based in San Luis Obispo, Lifewater focuses all its efforts on the countries of Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, teaching people how to make water safer by building latrines and tippy-taps, a simple gadget used to wash hands with running water."
- 1 To tap dance, or imitate tap dancing.
"But to watch Errico tippy-tap into the same scenes that Kelly used to enter in a grandly aristocratic and delicious sweep; to hear Errico and co-star Randy Graff chirp drollery that Hepburn, Kelly and Celeste Holm used to fire off like Stinger missiles (jus hearing Hepburn say “Oh, goody” made a wonderful theatrical evening for me); and to listen to the nice Daniel McDonald (as C.K. Dexter Haven) and Errico sing “True Love” when that unconquerable love ballad had its numbers retired half a century ago by Crosby and Kelly – is to cry."
- 2 To tap lightly.
"I have always envied the starch in their shirts and the clean fingers they use to tippy-tap their computers and develop weird schematics while their fake Rolex wristwatches glitter."
Example
More examples"[…] she trots through the halls of her mansion jiggling in her frilly dresses and making tippy-taps with her high heels."
More for "tippy-tap"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.