Also 9 tigg, tic. [f. TIG v.]
1. A touch: usually a light but significant touch, a tap or pat, = TICK sb.3 1; rarely applied to one that hurts. Sc. and north. dial.
1721. Kelly, Sc. Prov., 243. Many Masters, quoth the Poddock to the Harrow, when every Tin[e] gave her a Tig.
1822. Galt, Sir A. Wylie, I. v. 36. It’s bairnly to mak sic a wark for a bit tig on the haffet.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Words, Tig, a slight touch; as a mode of salutation.
1897. Ld. E. Hamilton, Outlaws, ii. 21. Just a tig of the cheek, Gavin…. There’s nothing in that to shame an honest man, surely?
2. A children’s game, in which one of the players—usually designated tig or it—pursues the others until he overtakes and touches or ‘tigs’ one, who in his turn becomes ‘tig’: the same as TAG sb.2
Cf. TICK sb.3 1 b, and Sanders, Wörterb. (1865), Der Zeck, ein Spiel der Kinder, wobei eins dem Andern einen Schlag giebt.
1816. S. M. Tait, in Remin. Lady Wake, v. (1909), 62. If it is wet, we play at tigg up and down the stairs.
1854. Warter, Last of Old Squires, ii. 15. The sons … would have a start with the fleetest youths of the hamlet at prisoner’s-base, or the old fashion’d game of tic.
1885. H. O. Forbes, Nat. Wand. E. Archip., 68. With varieties of chevy, tig, and blind-man’s-buff.
1894. Mrs. H. Ward, Marcella, I. 12. The mad games of ‘tig’ which she led … in the top playground.
