tickled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of tickle.

   She tickled the cat behind its ears until it purred.

   A loose feather tickled his nose and made him sneeze.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty: she tickled the baby (simple past) and the baby was tickled (past participle, after be or have). Only the transitive uses can turn passive, so a throat that tickled, in the intransitive sense of an itchy feeling, has no passive partner. The angler's sense lives here too: someone who tickled a fish caught it by hand, stroking its fins. That passive also shades into the "delighted" adjective.

2. 2
   adjectiveslang

   Greatly pleased and delighted.

   Like the warm glow of being remembered when you least expected it.

   He was absolutely tickled to be invited to the class reunion.

   They were tickled by the unexpected gift from their new neighbors.

   Similardelighted, pleased, thrilled, chuffed, overjoyed

   Oppositedisappointed, displeased, annoyed, unhappy

   Note

   This is slang for delight, so keep it to conversation and relaxed writing rather than formal prose. It grades with more and most, not with -er endings: more tickled, most tickled. It takes to with a verb (tickled to be invited) or by with a cause (tickled by the gift). The by construction overlaps with the passive of the verb form, and context decides whether someone was amused or literally touched.

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