Meaning
A humorous, informal way of saying to play the piano. The ivories are the piano's white keys, which on older instruments were faced with ivory, and tickle hints at a light, nimble touch. Usually said of lively or informal playing rather than serious concert performance, and often with a wink to jazz-age slang. Informal and jocular; more likely in entertainment writing and conversation than formal prose. The singular tickle the ivory and the playful tinkle the ivories both circulate. Regional use: American English in origin; now understood throughout the English-speaking world.
Origin
Ivory has named the white tusk material since Middle English, with the OED's factsheet dating the noun to around 1330 and filing a musical sense of ivory under the 1810s; Etymonline likewise records ivory applied in slang to piano keys by 1818. The jokey phrase itself is first recorded at the end of the nineteenth century: Wiktionary, citing the OED's June 2025 revision, quotes the Musical Courier of 13 December 1890 describing a Philadelphia pianist who tickled the ivories with old time unction - verified on the fetched entry. Willa Cather used it in The Song of the Lark (1915), and a 1930 review had Chico Marx tickling the ivories. Dating disagreement: the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms labels the expression colloquial, first half of the 1900s, but the 1890 newspaper citation antedates that window, and this entry follows the earlier date. Piano keys stopped being made of ivory during the twentieth century, but the joke has outlived the material.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- tickle the ivory
- tickling the ivories
- tinkle the ivories
Usage Examples
- After dessert, Uncle Ray tickled the ivories while the whole room sang along.
- She makes her living tickling the ivories in a hotel bar four nights a week.
- He has not tickled the ivories since he abandoned his piano lessons in college.