Tingling

How to spell tingling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tingling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tingling mean?

1. adjectiveProducing or feeling a slight prickling or stinging sensation on the skin.
2. nounA slight prickling or stinging feeling, often in the skin or extremities.

Tingling in a sentence

• adjective

  A faint tingling feeling spread through her fingers as the circulation came back.

• noun

  The doctor asked whether the tingling in his arm came and went.

• adjective

  The mint balm left a cool, tingling trace on his lips.

• noun

  She noticed a strange tingling along her scalp during the massage.

Where does tingling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the verb tingle, which appears in Middle English around the late 1300s and is widely thought to be a thinned, lighter-sounding variant of tinkle, an imitative word for a faint ringing. The underlying idea was a small, repeated, ringing or prickling stimulation, the kind of slight buzz you feel in cold fingers or after a knock to the elbow. Over time tingle settled into describing that faint pins-and-needles prickling on the skin, and the form tingling became its present participle and verbal noun. Because the sense started out so close to ringing, early uses sometimes blurred a ringing in the ears with a prickling on the body. The spelling keeps the soft -ng-l- cluster of tingle, simply losing the final -e before the -ing ending, which is the small point writers have to remember.

How the word is built

• tingle (to feel a slight prickling sensation)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix); the silent -e of tingle drops before -ing