The Patois pronunciation and spelling of "little", with the English "t" palatalised into a "k"-like sound — a regular feature of Jamaican Creole phonology that also turns "bottle" into "bokkle" and "matter" into "macka". Used in all the standard English senses of "little": small in size, in quantity, in age, or as a softener ("a lickle help, please"). Extremely common in everyday Patois speech and writing, in dancehall and reggae lyrics, and in UK Multicultural London English (MLE), where it travelled with the Windrush generation and entered grime, drill and road rap vocabularies in the 2000s. The spelling is a deliberate marker of Caribbean voice.
gimme a lickle minute, mi soon come
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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