[f. TRICKLE v.] A falling or flowing drop; a tear; a small quantity of liquid; a small fitful stream.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Pleur, a teare, a trickle.
So 1611. in Cotgrave.
1730–6. Bailey (folio), Trickle, a drop.
1855. Browning, Another Way of Love, iii. Delicious as trickles Of wine poured at mass-time.
1857. Mrs. Gatty, Parab. fr. Nat., Ser. II. (1868), 12. The waterfail … was reduced to a miserable trickle.
1897. ‘A. Hope,’ Phroso, ix. Vlacho’s blood began to curl in a meandering trickle from beneath the curtain.
fig. 1853. C. Brontë, Villette, viii. No flow, only a hesitating trickle of language.
1895. Baring-Gould, Noémi, v. But it [money] comes in in trickles and goes out in floods.
1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 637. It will only serve to bring down the little trickle of native trade.
