Talk:ivory

I've come across the expression "tickle somebody's ivories". By the content, I assume it means to excite or thrill, but I can't find any dictionary references to it. Has anyone heard it before?

Peter ^Isotalo 15:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Etymology

The word was originally "iver", and "ivory" probably came from the Latin word meaning made out of iver, and was probably first used as an adjective to describe something made of ivor, and then used as a noun itself, although this is just a guess. The same thing seems to have happened with ebony, and many other words that came from Latin material names. 75.121.183.209 07:04, 2 December 2014 (UTC)