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Glite Dictionary
to tickle the ear

to tickle the ear

7.3
To please someone with nice sounds like music or soft words
  • idiom
translation icon : deleitar el oído
  • If music merely tickled the ear, it would still be agreeable, but it would remain a trifling pastime.

Examples

  • The soft melody of the flute tickled the ear of everyone in the audience, leaving them in a joyous mood.

  • The gentle rustling of leaves tickled the ear as they danced in the breeze, adding music to our quiet afternoon.

  • Her sweet voice tickled the ear of the listeners, captivating them with delightful stories.

Synonyms

to tickle
vsto tickle the ear
94 1.0

To touch someone lightly so they feel a tingle or laugh

is about pleasing by pleasant sounds rather than physical touch
to tickle pink
vsto tickle the ear
  • Informal
1 6.3

Feel very happy and amused by something someone does

is narrower and focuses on pleasing people with pleasant sounds

Antonyms

to offend
524 2.8

Cause a person to feel hurt, upset and angry because of your words or actions

to displease
28 4.7

To make someone feel annoyed or unhappy

How Pleasing

to enchant
17 4.8
to captivate
19 4.2
to tickle the ear
7.3
to please
216 1.0

Surface Forms

tickle the ear infinitive
tickled the ear past
tickled the ear past participle
tickling the ear present participle
tickles the ear third person singular

Morphology

tickle + the + ear

The meaning 'to please or delight someone with pleasant sounds' is directly inferable from combining 'tickle' (to elicit amusement or delight) with 'ear' (the organ/sense of hearing); the phrase simply maps a tactile delight metaphor onto auditory pleasure. This is a straightforward, compositional metaphor found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents should be able to interpret it.

Etymology

The idiom tickle the ear comes from the image of a light touch on the ear that seems to tickle, giving a small, pleasant feeling. So music or soft words that give that gentle, pleasing feeling are said to tickle the ear, meaning 'to please or delight someone with pleasant sounds'.