ticket

From Middle English ticket, from Middle French etiquet m, estiquet m, and etiquette f, estiquette f (“a bill, note, label, ticket”), from Old French estechier, estichier, estequier (“to attach, stick”), (compare Picard estiquier (“to stick, pierce”)), from Frankish *stikkjan, *stekan (“to stick, pierce, sting”), from Proto-Germanic *stikaną, *stikōną, *staikijaną (“to be sharp, pierce, prick”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- (“to be sharp, to stab”). Doublet of etiquette. More at stick.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɪkɪt/

• Audio (UK); “a ticket”:

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• (weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /ˈtɪkət/
• Rhymes: -ɪkɪt

ticket (plural tickets)

1. A small document that acts as proof of something, often thereby granting the holder some ability.
   1. A pass entitling the holder to admission to a show, concert, sporting event, etc.

      I've got two tickets for the match on Saturday; want to come?

   2. A pass entitling the holder to board a train, a bus, a plane, or other means of transportation.

      train ticket   bus ticket   plane ticket

      You must show your ticket to the conductor.

   3. A permit to operate a machine on a construction site.

      Synonym: license / licence

   4. A certificate or token of a share in a lottery or other scheme for distributing money, goods, etc.

      lottery ticket   raffle ticket

      If I'd used my usual numbers, it would've been a winning ticket! Unlucky!

   5. A certificate of qualification as a ship's master, pilot, or other crew member.
      • 1942 July-August, T. F. Cameron, “How the Staff of a Railway is Recruited”, in Railway Magazine, page 207:

        The variety of the demands of the railways for staff is almost endless. They require men with master's tickets as dock masters and to command their steamships.

   6. (figurative) A solution to a problem; something that is needed in order to do something.

      That's the ticket.

      I saw my first bike as my ticket to freedom.

      • 1884, Mark Twain, chapter 34, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, →ISBN:

        "Here's the ticket. This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we wrench off the board."

2. A citation for a traffic violation.
3. (usually technical support) A service request, used to track complaints or requests that an issue be handled.
   • 2022 September 19, HarryBlank, “Beyond Repair”, in SCP Foundation‎, archived from the original on 15 September 2024:

     "Yeah." It was him, alright; if the world's weariest pair of workboots hadn't tipped her off, his world-weary voice certainly would have. "Where were you?"
     "My quarters. We've got a full ticket set today, and techs work best without oversight." Neither of these things was untrue, though the curation was more than a little dishonest.
     "Maybe yours do." Nascimbeni rolled out, back flat against a neon orange creeper, and sat up with an audible wince. "Mine fuck the dog."

4. (politics, informal) A list of candidates for an election, or a particular theme to a candidate's manifesto.

   Joe has joined the party's ticket for the county elections.

   Joe will be running on an anti-crime ticket.

   • 2019 March 3, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, “When Did Everyone Become a Socialist?”, in New York Magazine‎:

     Candidates like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are no longer too precious to run on the Democratic ticket, though the proposals they suggest are so ambitious — like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and free public college — that they don’t feel like compromises at all.

   • 2020 November 7, Chelsea Janes, “Kamala Harris, daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, elected nation’s first female vice president”, in Washington Post‎:

     Harris’s victory comes 55 years after the Voting Rights Act abolished laws that disenfranchised Black Americans, 36 years after the first woman ran on a presidential ticket and four years after Democrats were devastated by the defeat of Hillary Clinton

5. (dated) A little note or notice.
   • a. 1662 (date written), Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, London: J G W L and W G, published 1662, →OCLC:

     He constantly read his lectures twice a week for above forty years, giving notice of the time to his auditors in a ticket on the school doors.

6. (dated) A tradesman's bill or account (hence the phrase on ticket and eventually on tick).
   • 1633, Shackerley Marmion, A Fine Companion:

     Your courtier is mad to take up silks and velvets / On ticket for his mistress.

7. A label affixed to goods to show their price or description.
8. (dated) A visiting card.
   • 1878, Mrs. James Mason, All about Edith, page 124:

     I asked for a card, please, and she was quite put about, and said that she didn't require tickets to get in where she visited.

   • 1899, The Leisure Hour: An Illustrated Magazine for Home Reading:

     "Mr. Gibbs come in just now," said Mrs. Blewett, "and left his ticket over the chimley. There 'tis. I haven't touched it."

9. (law enforcement slang) A warrant.
   • 1999, Doug Most, Always in Our Hearts, page 148:

     […] I need a ticket, Bobby.” Agnor knew a ticket meant a search warrant.

• ticket on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Ticket in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

ticket (third-person singular simple present tickets, present participle ticketing, simple past and past participle ticketed)

1. To issue someone a ticket, as for travel or for a violation of a local or traffic law.
2. To mark with a ticket.

   to ticket goods in a retail store

• ticket off

• ktetic

Borrowed from English ticket.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɪ.kət/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: tic‧ket

ticket n or m (plural tickets, diminutive ticketje n)

1. ticket or voucher

• vliegticket

• → Indonesian: tiket

English ticket, itself a borrowing from Middle French estiquet (thus a reborrowing). Doublet of étiquette

• (Europe) IPA^(key): /ti.kɛ/, /ti.ke/
• (Canada) IPA^(key): /t͡si.kɛt/, /t͡si.kɛ/, /t͡si.ke/

• Audio (France):

  (file)

ticket m (plural tickets)

1. ticket (admission, pass)
2. receipt
3. (North America) ticket (traffic citation)

• “ticket”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Unadapted borrowing from English ticket. Doublet of etichetta.

• IPA^(key): /ˈti.ket/
• Rhymes: -iket
• Hyphenation: tìc‧ket

ticket m (invariable)

1. prescription charge
2. ticket stub (especially at a horserace)

• ticket in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Unadapted borrowing from English ticket.

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃi.ket͡ʃ/

ticket m (plural tickets)

1. (Brazil) Alternative form of tíquete

Unadapted borrowing from English ticket.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtiket/
• Rhymes: -iket
• Syllabification: tic‧ket

ticket m (plural tickets)

1. receipt

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

ticket

1. definite singular of tick