titillatio

From tītillō, tītillāre +‎ -tiō.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [tiː.tɪlˈlaː.ti.oː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ti.tilˈlat.t͡si.o]

tītillātiō f (genitive tītillātiōnis); third declension

1. tickling, titillation
   • 45 BCE, Cicero, De Natura Deorum 1.113:

     At hās leviōris dūcis voluptātēs, quibus quasi “tītillātiō” (Epicūrī enim hoc verbum est) adhibētur sēnsibus.

     But these you consider to be the more trivial pleasures, in which a sort of “tickling” (for this is Epicurus’s own word) is applied to the senses.
     (First use in Latin: Cicero added the suffix -tio to the verb titillo to interpret the Epicurean concept of “kinetic” or “moving” pleasures that “tickle” the senses.)

   • 106 BCE – 43 BCE, Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute 14.47:

     At nōn est voluptātum tanta quasi “tītillātiō” in senibus.

     But, [as they say], there is not such a “tickling” of the pleasures, so to speak, among the elderly.
     (Cicero re-uses his neologism in De Senectute to explain how older people are fortunate to minimize their pursuits of such ephemeral pleasures.)

   • c. 4 BCE – 65 CE, Seneca the Younger, Epistulae 92.6
   • c. 347 CE – 420 CE, Jerome, Epistulae 52.3

Third-declension noun.

• → English: titillation

• “titillatio”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “titillatio”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “titillatio”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.