1. 1. A paper slip or card indicating that its holder has paid for or is entitled to a specified service, right, or consideration: a theater ticket; an airline ticket.
   2. An e-ticket.
2. A certifying document, especially a captain's or pilot's license.
3. An identifying or descriptive tag attached to merchandise; a label.
4. A list of candidates proposed or endorsed by a political party; a slate.
5. A legal summons, especially for a traffic violation.
6. The proper or desirable thing: A change of scene would be just the ticket for us.
7. Informal. A means to an end: "He went to Washington ... to become press secretary ... it was his ticket out of the Delta" (Nicholas Lamann).

1. To provide with a ticket for passage or admission: ticket all passengers through to Amsterdam.
2. To attach a ticket to; tag. See synonyms at mark¹.
3. To designate for a specified use or end; destine: funds that have been ticketed for medical research.
4. To serve (an offender) with a legal summons: ticket a speeding motorist.

[Obsolete French etiquet, label, note, from Old French estiquet, post serving as a target in certain sports, notice, label, from estiquier, to stick, of Germanic origin.]

WORD HISTORY   The resemblance in form between the words ticket and etiquette is not accidental; both have the same ultimate source, Old French estiquet. But because these words were borrowed into English at different times, they came into our language with different meanings. Old French estiquet meant "a note, label." Having been changed in form to etiquet in French, the word was adopted into English in the 16th century in a form without the initial e, tiket (first recorded in 1528). The earliest uses of the word in English were in the senses "a short written notice," "a notice posted in a public place," and "a written certification." The word is first recorded with reference to something like a ticket of admission in 1673. In French, meanwhile, the word (in the form étiquette) came in the 18th century to mean "a ceremonial, a book in which court ceremonies were noted down or labeled." The French word was borrowed again into English, this time in the form etiquette, which is first recorded in 1750.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.