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TICKING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A strong fabric used for mattress and pillow covers
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("ticking" is a kind of...):
cloth; fabric; material; textile (artifact made by weaving or felting or knitting or crocheting natural or synthetic fibers)
Derivation:
tick (sew)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A metallic tapping sound
Example:
he counted the ticks of the clock
Synonyms:
tick; ticking
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("ticking" is a kind of...):
sound (the sudden occurrence of an audible event)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ticking"):
ticktock; tictac; tocktact (steady recurrent ticking sound as made by a clock)
Derivation:
tick (make a sound like a clock or a timer)
tick (make a clicking or ticking sound)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb tick
Context examples:
What intolerable dulness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock; and watching Miss Murdstone's little shiny steel beads as she strung them; and wondering whether she would ever be married, and if so, to what sort of unhappy man; and counting the divisions in the moulding of the chimney-piece; and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall!
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the excess of its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears of Mrs. Crupp, then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber, situated at about the level of low-water mark, soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an incorrigible clock, to which she always referred me when we had any little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was never less than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had always been put right in the morning by the best authorities.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
