Word.ws English Dictionary

tiddle

tiddle verb: to treat tenderly; to pet; to nurse a young animal by hand.

Verb

tiddle (third-person singular simple present tiddles, present participle tiddling, simple past and past participle tiddled)

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To treat tenderly; to pet; to nurse a young animal by hand.
    Synonyms:
    dawt, faddle, grope, pettle
  2. (UK, dialectal, intransitive, obsolete) To potter about; to do something idly.
  3. (UK, childish) To urinate.
    • Is it a tiger who needed to tiddle?
      A wandering wombat who needed to widdle?
      A waddling penguin too frozen to piddle?2007, Jeanne Willis, Who's in the Bathroom?
    Synonyms:
    piddle, widdle

Synonyms of tiddle

All synonyms of tiddle

Forms of tiddle

third-person singular presenttiddles
present participletiddling
past participletiddled
pasttiddled

Origin of tiddle

From a variant of tidder. See tid.

Questions about tiddle

What does tiddle mean?
Tiddle means to treat tenderly; to pet; to nurse a young animal by hand.
What part of speech is tiddle?
Tiddle is a verb.
What is the past tense of tiddle?
The past tense of tiddle is tiddled.

Words near tiddle in the dictionary

  1. Tiddington-with-Albury
  2. tiddivate
  3. tiddivated
  4. tiddivates
  5. tiddivating
  6. tiddle
  7. tiddled
  8. tiddledy
  9. Tiddledy Winks
  10. tiddledywink
  11. tiddledywinks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tiddle (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.

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