tight as a tick

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

tight as a tick (not comparable)

1. (slang, simile) Drunk, inebriated.
   • 1933, Irving Berlin, “Eighteenth Amen Repealed”, in The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, page 290:

     For there ain't no kick
     Getting tight as a tick
     When you know that you're not breaking the law

2. Fully inflated; swollen near to bursting.
   • 2002, Steven Callahan, Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea, page 115:

     I blow it up until it's tight as a tick. Just below the skirt through which the lanyard passes, a tiny mouth whistles a single-note tune until the balloon's lungs are emptied.

3. (slang, simile) Unwilling to spend money.
   • 2003, Anna Quindlen, Blessings: a Novel, page 215:

     "Son, excuse me, but the woman was as tight as a tick, as my grannie used to say. The reason I didn't work on that car of hers is because the one time I did, I charged her a hundred forty-four dollars for a battery, which as you know is the cost to me. She said I was gouging her."

   • 2003, Rita Mae Brown, Catch as Cat Can, page 20:

     The last time she had visited, Sean's father, Tiny Tim, who was tight as a tick with his money, jovially presided over the place, one big yard filled with rusting cars.

• (drunk, inebriated): drunk, full as a goog, full as a tick, inebriated, intoxicated; see also Thesaurus:drunk
• (fully inflated): full, full as a tick, inflated, overinflated, swollen
• (unwilling to spend money): miserly, thrifty; see also Thesaurus:stingy