titillation

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Latin tītillō, tītillāre

Proto-Indo-European *-tis

Proto-Indo-European *-Hō

Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō

Proto-Italic *-tiō

Latin -tiō

Latin tītillātiō, tītillātiōnembor.

English titillation

Borrowed from Latin tītillātiō, tītillātiōnem.

Noun

titillation (countable and uncountable, plural titillations)

1. A pleasurable or sexually exciting sensation.
   • 1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC:

     there feeling, and most gently indeed, squeezing those tender globular reservoirs; the magic touch took instant effect, quicken'd, and brought on upon the spur the symptoms of that sweet agony, the melting moment of dissolution, when pleasure dies by pleasure, and the mysterious engine of it overcomes the titillation it has rais'd in those parts, by plying them with the stream of a warm liquid that is itself the highest of all titillations

2. The process or outcome of titillating.

Related terms

• titillate

Translations

a pleasurable sensation

• Bulgarian: задоволство (bg) n (zadovolstvo), възбуждане (bg) n (vǎzbuždane)
• German: Erregung (de) f, Kitzel (de) m
• Māori: pakara

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ti.ti.ja.sjɔ̃/, /ti.ti.la.sjɔ̃/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

Noun

titillation f (plural titillations)

1. light tickling

Further reading

• “titillation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012