Word.ws English Dictionary

tinkle the ivories

tinkle the ivories is the alternative form of tickle the ivories.

Meaning of tickle the ivories

Verb

tickle the ivories (third-person singular simple present tickles the ivories, present participle tickling the ivories, simple past and past participle tickled the ivories)

  1. (informal, intransitive) To play a piano or other keyboard instrument.
    • […] Charles Jarvis, the Philadelphia pianist, […] tickled the ivories with old time unction and gave some of the audience the impression that Philadelphia was really a musical city.1890 December 13, Hans Slack, “Real Music in Baltimore”, in Marc A. Blumenberg, Otto Floersheim, editors, Musical Courier: A Weekly Journal, volume XXI, number 25, New York, N.Y.: Blumenberg &...

Forms of tinkle the ivories

third-person singular presenttinkles the ivories
present participletinkling the ivories
past participletinkled the ivories
pasttinkled the ivories

Questions about tinkle the ivories

What is tinkle the ivories the alternative form of?
Tinkle the ivories is the alternative form of tickle the ivories.

Words near tinkle the ivories in the dictionary

  1. tinkety-tonk
  2. Tinkham
  3. Tinkhams
  4. tinking
  5. tinkle
  6. tinkle the ivories
  7. tinkle-down
  8. tinkled
  9. tinkler
  10. tinklers
  11. tinkles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tinkle the ivories (page history and authors); tickle the ivories (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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Cite this entry: “tinkle the ivories.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tinkle_the_ivories. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.