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''ticking'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260211112127-00-⌔

ticking - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

ticking (countable and uncountable, plural tickings)

  • A strong cotton or linen fabric used to cover pillows and mattresses.
    • ✤ Harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his bed-place. He was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles.1

Noun

ticking (countable and uncountable, plural tickings)

🖼️ ➺

  • A sound of something that ticks. (For example, the second hand on a clock face.)
    • ✤ Were they indeed the tickings of a hundred clocks — the fine low inward breathings of Time’s children!2
    • ✤ The combination of “monotony” and “variety,” which keeps the writer in a trance-like state between sleep and wake, is then characterized by the figure of a ticking watch: “If certain sensitive persons listen persistently to the ticking of a watch […] they fall into the hypnotic trance; and rhythm is but the ticking of a watch made softer, that one must needs listen, and various, that one may not be swept beyond memory or grow weary of listening” (1961: 159).3
  • An illusional style of dance where one moves his or her body to the “tic” of the music creating a strobe or animated effect.

Verb

ticking

  • present participle and gerund of tick
    • ✤ a ticking time bomb
    • ✤ The combination of “monotony” and “variety,” which keeps the writer in a trance-like state between sleep and wake, is then characterized by the figure of a ticking watch: “If certain sensitive persons listen persistently to the ticking of a watch […] they fall into the hypnotic trance; and rhythm is but the ticking of a watch made softer, that one must needs listen, and various, that one may not be swept beyond memory or grow weary of listening” (1961: 159).4

Noun

ticking (plural tickings)

  • A marking that occurs on some horses, involving white flecks of hair at the flank, and white hairs at the base of the tail, called a skunk tail or rabicano, sometimes referred to as birdcatcher ticks.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈtɪkɪŋ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɪkɪŋ

Etymology 1

From tick (“sheet, cover”) + -ing (“material, collection”).

Etymology 2

Etymology 3

From tick (“tick mark”) + -ing (“having the property”).

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1897, Rudyard Kipling, “chapter 1”, in Captains Courageous: ↩

  2. 1842, Laman Blanchard, “The Frolics of Time”, in George Cruikshank’s Omnibus: ↩

  3. 2018 May, Angela Leighton, Hearing Things: The Work of Sound in Literature, Harvard University Press, page 237: ↩

  4. 2018 May, Angela Leighton, Hearing Things: The Work of Sound in Literature, Harvard University Press, page 237: ↩

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Secondary

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