orig. Sc. and north. dial. Also 6 kittil(l. [f. KITTLE v.1; the use of the simple verbal stem as an adjective is unusual.] Ticklish; difficult to deal with, requiring great caution or skill; unsafe to meddle with; as to which one may easily go wrong or come to grief; risky, precarious, ‘nice,’ delicate.
1560. [implied in kittleness: see below].
1568. Satir. Poems Reform., xlvi. 60. Scho will be kittill of hir dok. Ibid. (1571), xxvii. 22. Thow may hir tyne in turning of a tyde; Cast weill thy courss, thow hes ane kittle cwir.
1596. Jas. VI., Lett. to Earl Huntley, in Spottiswood, Hist. Ch. Scot. (1655), 438. If your conscience be so kittle, as it cannot permit you.
1600. in Pitcairn, Crim. Trials, II. 284. My brother is ‘kittle to shoe behind,’ and dare not enterprise for fear.
1641. Best, Farm. Bks. (Surtees), 80. If an ewe bee kittle on her yower, or unkinde to her lambe.
1721. Ramsay, To Dalhousie, 22. Till frae his kittle post he fa’. Ibid. (1728), Rob. Richy & Sandy, 78. Kittle points of law.
1765. A. Dickson, Treat. Agric. (ed. 2), 232, note. Every common plowman will tell you, that, when the plough-irons are short, his plough goes kittle. By this he means, that it is easily turned aside, and is difficult to manage.
1815. Scott, Guy M., xxii. I maun ride, to get to the Liddel or it be dark, for your Waste has but a kittle character. Ibid. (1818), Hrt. Midl., xii. These are kittle times … when the people take the power of life and death out of the hands of the rightful magistrate into their ain rough grip.
1830. Blackw. Mag., XXVII. 829. The kittler a question is, the mair successfully do you grapple wi’t.
1869. C. Gibbon, R. Gray, xiv. Metaphors are kittle things to handle.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., xxv. She is kittle cattle to shoe, I think.
1890. Truth, 11 Sept., 526/2. Cleopatra is a kittle character for a London theatre, unless played by some French actress who has no character to lose.
Hence Kittleness.
1560. Rolland, Seven Sages, 185. Ye may persaue … Of wemen the gret brukilnes And of thair kynde the kittilnes.
