Emily Dickinson Lexicon

tight (-er, -est), adv. [ON þéhtr.]

1. Firmly; securely.
2. Intensely; with increased pressure; with a determination not to let go.
3. Restrained; constrained; held captive; narrowly confined; not free to move; in a very small amount of space.
4. Closely; narrowly.
5. Densely; heavily; [fig.] with intense atmospheric pressure.
6. Phrase. “the tighter”: more firmly; in a stronger grip; with greater intensity in touching; with an increase in the pressure of physical contact.

tighten (-ing, -s), v. [see tight, a.]

1. Decrease in space available; stretch more tautly as pressure increases; lose room within as growth occurs in a finite area.
2. Firmly packing in; tamping down of.

till, prep. [ON til.] (webplay: come, doubtless, dress, Eden, garden, God, reach, Saxon, seed, set, strain).

1. Up to the time that; before; during the whole time before.
2. Up to the time of.
3. To the degree that; to the point that.
4. For the time when.

till (-ed, -ing), v. [OE tilian, to strive, acquire.]

1. Cultivate; plow; prepare for seed.
2. Stir up; delve into.

tillage, n. [see till, v.]

Pasture; food; crops cultivated for the feeding of livestock.

tilt (-s), n. [ME tild, teld.]

Lean; incline; sway; shift; move.

Tim, proper n. [Clipping of Timothy; L. < Gk 'dear to God'.]

Young boy; possibly Tiny Tim Cratchit; lame child who goes to church with his father on Christmas Day; beloved character in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

timber (-s), n. [OE build.]

Wood of growing trees.

timbrel (-s), n. [OFr timbre, kettledrum.]

Tambourine-like instrument.

Timbuctoo, proper n. [now “Timbuktu”; < Tuareg 'old,' or 'ancient'; or, Timbutu, hollow.]

Town near the Sahara in West Africa; principle city in nineteenth-century Africa that only three white men had visited; [fig.] most distant place imaginable.