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tinkle

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Tinkle

English

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Etymology

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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”).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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tinkle (third-person singular simple present tinkles, present participle tinkling, simple past and past participle tinkled)

  1. (intransitive) To make light metallic sounds, rather like a very small bell.
    The glasses tinkled together as they were placed on the table.
    • 1753, Robert Dodsley, Agriculture:
      The sprightly horse / Moves to the music of his tinkling bells.
    • 1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods‎[1], London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 1:
      With a sound like tinkling bells, far off in a land of shepherds hidden by some hill, the waters of many fountains turned again home.
    • 1954, Ian Fleming, “The Undertaker's Wind”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 186:
      Outside, the crickets and the tree-frogs started to zing and tinkle and the great hawkmoths came to the wire-netting across the windows and clutched it, gazing with trembling ecstasy at the two oil lamps that hung from the cross-beams inside.
  2. (transitive) To cause to tinkle.
  3. (transitive) To indicate, signal, etc. by tinkling.
    The butler tinkled dinner.
  4. To hear, or resound with, a small, sharp sound.
  5. (intransitive, informal) To urinate.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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tinkle (countable and uncountable, plural tinkles)

  1. A light metallic sound, resembling the tinkling of bells or wind chimes.
    • 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “At the Pit's Mouth”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 56:
      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.
    • 1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 97:
      She laughed, her voice a tinkle in the silence of the circular chamber.
    • 1994, Stephen Fry, chapter 2, in The Hippopotamus:
      At the very moment he cried out, David realised that what he had run into was only the Christmas tree. . . . There were no sounds of any movement upstairs: no shouts, no sleepy grumbles, only a gentle tinkle from the decorations as the tree had recovered from the collision.
  2. (UK, informal) A telephone call.
    Synonyms: call, ring
    Give me a tinkle when you arrive.
  3. (informal, euphemistic) An act of urination.
  4. (informal, euphemistic) Urine. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Derived terms

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Translations

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