tickle someone's fancy

present singular third person tickles someone's fancy · participle present tickling someone's fancy · participle past tickled someone's fancy · past tickled someone's fancy

1. To amuse, entertain, or appeal to someone; to stimulate someone's imagination in a favorable manner.

   There will not be any Nancy to tickle my fancy in a kitchen full of handerkerchiefs and beckoning, unmade beds.

   1969, Dylan Thomas, Adventures in the Skin Trade, →ISBN, page 16

   3 more examples

   But the notion of Ralph Nickleby having directed it to be done, tickled his fancy so much, that he could not refrain from cracking all his ten fingers in succession.

   1839, Charles Dickens, chapter 11, in Nicholas Nickleby

   Mr. Adams, who loves a joke, and is not a lunatic, notwithstanding his opening words, tickled their fancy for an hour with quotations from Shakespeare and the editorial columns of The Brooklyn Eagle.

   1895 October 1, “‘The People’ Name Judge Gaynor”, in New York Times, retrieved 29 Jul 2009, page 2

   If you’re looking for something that tickles your fancy, and now and then even stirs your soul, this just might hit the G-spot.

   2005 April 9, Sam Marlowe, "Vagina Monologues" (theatre review), Times Online (UK) (retrieved 29 July 2009)