[f. TINKLE v.1 (sense 2).] The act or action of tinkling; a sharp light ringing sound, such as that made by a small bell, or by pieces of metal, glass, or the like, struck together, etc.
1804. J. Grahame, Sabbath, etc. (1808), 66. Its runnel by degrees Diminishing, the murmur turns a tinkle.
1825. Scott, Betrothed, ix. The shrill tinkle of a harp.
1847. Emerson, Merlin, i. No jingling serenader’s art, Nor tinkle of piano strings.
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, lxiv. 262. Now with a cymbal slim would a sharp shrill tinkle awaken.
1877–8. Henley, in Ballades, etc. (Canterb. Poets), 77. Of ice and glass the tinkle, Pellucid, silver-shrill.
b. fig. in reference to speech or verse. Cf. TINKLE v.1 2 c, 3 b.
1725. P. Walker, Life A. Peden, To Rdr. (1827), 17. None of their Addresses have had the Tinkle or Sound of the Declarations and Faithful Warnings of the General Assemblies of this Church.
1776. Mickle, trans. Camoens’ Lusiad, Introd. 141, note. There are a race of Critics … who would strip poetry of all her ornaments,… who would leave her nothing but the neatness, the cadence, and the tinkle of verse.
1789. Belsham, Ess., I. xii. 226. What Dryden calls the tinkle in the close of the couplet.
1795. Mason, Ch. Mus., ii. 114. The tinkle of the words is all that strikes the ears.
c. Reduplicated, expressing repetition of such sounds; also as adv.
1682. Bells of Oxford, in Wit & Drollery, 302. Tincle, tincle, goes the little Bell, To call the Students home.
1879. Jefferies, Wild Life in S. Co., 260. There comes the tinkle-tinkle of a bell.
1888. Doughty, Arabia Deserta, I. 149. They make, as the daughters of Jerusalem, a tinkle-tinkle as they go.
