Word.ws English Dictionary

tingle

/ˈtɪŋɡəl/

tingle verb: to feel a prickling or mildly stinging sensation.

Verb (1)

tingle (third-person singular simple present tingles, present participle tingling, simple past and past participle tingled)

  1. (intransitive) To feel a prickling or mildly stinging sensation.
    • My hands were tingling from the cold.
    • I got hit in the butt yesterday, and it still tingles.
    1. (intransitive) To feel an ASMR response.
      • I tingled
      • This made me tingle
  2. (transitive) To cause to feel a prickling or mildly stinging sensation.
    • Tingle your tastebuds with these exotic dishes.
    1. (transitive) To cause to feel an ASMR response.
      • tingle someone
  3. (intransitive) To ring; to tinkle or twang.
    • Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 13”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
    • sharp tingling bells1859-1895, Charles Dickens, All the Year Round
  4. (transitive) To cause to ring, to tinkle.
    • Jackson, the butler, older of course, and altered he can see at a glance, opens the door almost before his hand is off the bell he has only gently tingled.1874, Charles C. Duek, The abbey chimes, page 76
    • […]the Captain they trusted so well
      Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
      And that was to tingle his bell.1874–1876 (date written), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Fit the Fit the Second.⁠ The Bellman’s Speech.”, in The Hunting of the Snark […], London: Macmillan and Co., published...
    Synonyms:
    tinkle

Noun (1)

tingle (plural tingles)

  1. A prickling or mildly stinging sensation; frisson.
    1. (in plural) An ASMR response.
      • get/give tingles
  2. A tingling sound; a chime or tinkle.
    • Their every chime, ring, and tingle sings with joy and makes wonderful music as they dance with the swirling winds of nature.2010, Joseph J. Mazzella, Walking the Path of Love, page 223
    • The tingle of a wind chime drifted to her on the ocean breeze.2014, Ally Blake, Marriage Make-Over

Noun (2)

tingle (plural tingles)

  1. A nail of the very smallest size; a tack.
    • From the diminutive "tingle" or baby tack up to the massive ship spike, almost every kind of nail is shown, not only in iron and steel, but also in copper, zinc, and brass,, and on the partition will be noticed a somewhat novel application of nails.1887, “The Exhibition and the Exhibits”, in The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, page 91
    • Figs. 16, 17, 18 show method of forming a double welt, notice the copper tack or tingle to same as further security.1910, Samuel Barlow Bennett, A Manual of Technical Plumbing and Sanitary Science, page 206
  2. A patch that covers a hole in something that needs to be watertight, such as a roof or a boat.
    • If damage is localised then you may easily tingle it over and a perfectly good sound job may be made with a tingle. Metal tingles are not ; they require a lot of fastenings and even then are not easily made really watertight.1956, World Fishing - Volume 5, page 54
    • With tin snips, cut the tingle to shape (some people bend the edges over to form a 1/4-inch hem), and lather it with polysulfide seam compound.1980 July-December, John Pazereskis, “Wood Boat Seam Repairs”, in Cruising World, page 48
  3. An attachment in the middle of a long guide line to keep it from sagging.
    • The tingle is fastened on the top of the brick by a small pat of mortar, on which is placed a piece of brick to keep the tingle firm.1915 February, “British Method of Laying Bricks”, in Building Age, volume 37, page 68
    • a tingle is used to prevent the line from sagging in the middle if it is being used on a long wall1983, W. G. Nash, Brickwork - Volume 1, page 76

Verb (2)

tingle (third-person singular simple present tingles, present participle tingling, simple past and past participle tingled)

  1. (transitive) To fasten with a tingle; to tack.
    • Tingle the middle down by placing a tingle at the toe, and a couple at the joints.2016, A Classic Guide to Making and Repairing Vintage Shoes and Boots
  2. (transitive) To patch with a tingle; to cover a hole in something that requires it to be watertight.
    • If damage is localised then you may easily tingle it over and a perfectly good sound job may be made with a tingle.1956, World Fishing - Volume 5, page 54
    • To put her on the other tack while we tingle a started butt would lose us twenty-four hours at least, maybe more.2018, Denys Arthur Rayner, The Long Fight
  3. (transitive) To secure the middle of a guide line by means of a tingle.
    • If there is much length of line it will require tingling up to keep it from sagging. To tingle a line it is best to have a plumbing place at that point were the tingle is to be fixed so as to ensure the work beging kept true.1915 February, “British Method of Laying Bricks”, in Building Age, volume 37, page 68

Proper noun capitalized: Tingle

Tingle (plural Tingles)

  1. A surname.

tingle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

tingle in Hindi

to have a prickling or mildly stinging sensation
सिहरन sihran

tingle in Tamil

கூச்சம், சிலிர்ப்பு

tingle in Urdu

بجنا, دھڑکنا, سنسنانا

tingle in Malayalam

to tingle, to have a pins and needles sensation
തരിക്കുക tarikkuka
More languagesFewer languages
tingle in Kannada
ಜುಮ್ಮೆನ್ನು
tingle in Arabic
وَخَزَ waḵaza, نَمِلَ namila

Examples of tingle in a sentence

  • Meanwhile the sick woman, frowning prodigiously, and openly scoffing at the whole procedure, was, in spite of herself, beginning to tingle with a feeling perilously near to excitement.1913, Eleanor H. Porter, chapter 8, in Pollyanna, L.C. Page, →OCLC:
  • They delightfully ring to greet the rising sun and still tingle during the darkest night.2010, Joseph J. Mazzella, Walking the Path of Love, page 223:
  • At that precise moment, after a week of silence, the solar chime forcefully tingled, loudly and clearly, again and again.2021, Benita Glickman, Then and Now: Snapshots of My Life:
  • The tingle of bells is crisp, cutting the Tibetan air with a clarity that feels like blue porcelain cracking against the endless chime of bells.2017, Laurence Brahm, Searching for Shangri-La, page 52:

All 40 example sentences with tingle

Synonyms of tingle

Forms of tingle

Verb
third-person singular presenttingles
present participletingling
past participletingled
pasttingled
Noun
pluraltingles
Proper noun
pluralTingles

Past tense of tingle: tingled

Origin of tingle

From Middle English tinglen, of uncertain origin. Possibly from Middle English tingen (“to tink”) + -len, equivalent to ting + -le. Alternatively, possibly a variant of Middle English tinclen (“to tinkle”) or from Old English tinclian (“to tickle”). More at tinkle. Compare also West Frisian tingelje (“to tinkle”), Dutch tingelen (“to tinkle, jingle”).

cognate with the Middle High German zingel

Words formed from tingle

Phrases with tingle

Words that rhyme with tingle

26 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tingle

What does tingle mean?
Tingle means to feel a prickling or mildly stinging sensation.
What is tingle in Hindi?
Tingle in Hindi is सिहरन (sihran). See Tingle meaning in Hindi.
How do you use tingle in a sentence?
Meanwhile the sick woman, frowning prodigiously, and openly scoffing at the whole procedure, was, in spite of herself, beginning to tingle with a feeling perilously near to excitement.
What part of speech is tingle?
Tingle can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tingle?
Tingle is pronounced /ˈtɪŋɡəl/.
What is the past tense of tingle?
The past tense of tingle is tingled.

Words near tingle in the dictionary

  1. tinging
  2. Tingira Heights
  3. tingkat
  4. tingkats
  5. Tinglayan
  6. tingle
  7. tingle immunities
  8. tingle immunity
  9. tingled
  10. tinglehead
  11. tingleheads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tingle (page history and authors); Tingle (page history and authors); tingle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tingle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); തരിക്കുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); tingle (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tingle.wav.

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