Word.ws English Dictionary

gargalesis

gargalesis noun: heavy tickling often leading to laughter.

Noun

gargalesis (uncountable)

  1. Heavy tickling often leading to laughter.
    • Pending a better nomenclature we suggest for the former the term knismesis and for the latter the term gargalesis, with the adjectives knismic and gargalic, hyperknismesis and hyper-gargalesis for excess, etc.1897, G. Stanley Hall, Arthur Alliń, “The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic”, in The American Journal of Psychology, 9(1) (Oct., 1897), pp. 1-41
    • Gargalesis, the heavy tickle associated with play and laughter and seemingly with pleasure, may be limited to the primates, but not solely to human beings.1999 Christine R. Harris, "The Mystery of Ticklish Laughter," American Scientist, 87(4) (July-August 1999), p344

Origin of gargalesis

From Ancient Greek γαργαλίζω (gargalízō, “tickle”) + -esis.

Questions about gargalesis

What does gargalesis mean?
Gargalesis means heavy tickling often leading to laughter.
What part of speech is gargalesis?
Gargalesis is a noun.

Words near gargalesis in the dictionary

  1. garfish
  2. garfishes
  3. Garforth
  4. Garfunkel
  5. garg
  6. gargalesis
  7. gargalesthesia
  8. Gargalianoi
  9. Gargan
  10. Garganega
  11. Garganera

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gargalesis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “gargalesis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gargalesis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.