"tick tack" meaning in English

See tick tack in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: tick tacks [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} tick tack (countable and uncountable, plural tick tacks)
  1. (onomatopoeia) The sound of repeated tapping, knocking, or clicking. Tags: countable, onomatopoeic, uncountable
    Sense id: en-tick_tack-en-noun-eglX7t3J Categories (other): English onomatopoeias
  2. (countable) A device used to tap on a window or door from a distance. Tags: countable
    Sense id: en-tick_tack-en-noun-L~-7yaGJ
  3. (UK, uncountable) Alternative form of tic-tac, a sign language used by bookmakers. Tags: UK, alt-of, alternative, uncountable Alternative form of: tic-tac (extra: a sign language used by bookmakers)
    Sense id: en-tick_tack-en-noun-~~g0JnHo Categories (other): British English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English reduplications, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 9 8 83 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 6 6 87 Disambiguation of English reduplications: 5 10 85 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 8 10 82

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for tick tack meaning in English (3.3kB)

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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "tick tacks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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          "kind": "other",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1870, Charles Bilton, “The household friend”, in The Class and Standard Series of Reading Books, Book IV, Special lessons for girls, page 199",
          "text": "But come to the clock, Mary. Remember, our lives are short, and they contain only a certain number of \"tick tacks;\" we cannot, therefore, afford to waste them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992, William Russell Bascom, African Folktales in the New World, page 98",
          "text": "Nancy took Tacoma to a cow. Nancy went in first and cut his bag full. He told Tacoma not to cut the thing that went \"tick, tack,\" but Tacoma cut it and the cow fell down dead.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The sound of repeated tapping, knocking, or clicking."
      ],
      "id": "en-tick_tack-en-noun-eglX7t3J",
      "links": [
        [
          "onomatopoeia",
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        [
          "tap",
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        [
          "knock",
          "knock"
        ],
        [
          "click",
          "click"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(onomatopoeia) The sound of repeated tapping, knocking, or clicking."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "onomatopoeic",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1907, Nelson Lloyd, “The last ghost in Harmony”, in Scribner's Magazine, volume 41",
          "text": "I got me a hammer and nails with the heavy lead sinker offen my fishnet, and it wasn't long before the finest tick-tack you ever saw was working against the Spiegelnails' parlor window, with me in a lilac-bush operating the string that kept the weight a-swinging.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
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        "(countable) A device used to tap on a window or door from a distance."
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      "tags": [
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          "extra": "a sign language used by bookmakers",
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      "glosses": [
        "Alternative form of tic-tac, a sign language used by bookmakers."
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      "id": "en-tick_tack-en-noun-~~g0JnHo",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, uncountable) Alternative form of tic-tac, a sign language used by bookmakers."
      ],
      "tags": [
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  "word": "tick tack"
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{
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
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    "English reduplications",
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  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "tick tacks",
      "tags": [
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  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
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      "expansion": "tick tack (countable and uncountable, plural tick tacks)",
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  "lang_code": "en",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1870, Charles Bilton, “The household friend”, in The Class and Standard Series of Reading Books, Book IV, Special lessons for girls, page 199",
          "text": "But come to the clock, Mary. Remember, our lives are short, and they contain only a certain number of \"tick tacks;\" we cannot, therefore, afford to waste them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1992, William Russell Bascom, African Folktales in the New World, page 98",
          "text": "Nancy took Tacoma to a cow. Nancy went in first and cut his bag full. He told Tacoma not to cut the thing that went \"tick, tack,\" but Tacoma cut it and the cow fell down dead.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The sound of repeated tapping, knocking, or clicking."
      ],
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          "tap",
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        ],
        [
          "click",
          "click"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(onomatopoeia) The sound of repeated tapping, knocking, or clicking."
      ],
      "tags": [
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      "categories": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1907, Nelson Lloyd, “The last ghost in Harmony”, in Scribner's Magazine, volume 41",
          "text": "I got me a hammer and nails with the heavy lead sinker offen my fishnet, and it wasn't long before the finest tick-tack you ever saw was working against the Spiegelnails' parlor window, with me in a lilac-bush operating the string that kept the weight a-swinging.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A device used to tap on a window or door from a distance."
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      "links": [
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        "(countable) A device used to tap on a window or door from a distance."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable"
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    },
    {
      "alt_of": [
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          "extra": "a sign language used by bookmakers",
          "word": "tic-tac"
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  "word": "tick tack"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.