tittle
/ˈtɪt.əl/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms tittles tittling tittled
- noun (typography) Any small dot, stroke, or diacritical mark, especially if part of a letter, or of a letter-like abbreviation; in particular, the dots over the Latin letters i and j.
- noun (by extension) A small, insignificant amount (of something); a modicum or speck.
- verb (Scotland) To chatter.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English tytle, titel, titele, from Anglo-Norman titil, titule and Medieval Latin titulus (“small stroke, diacritical mark, accent”), from Latin titulus (“title”). Doublet of tilde, titer/titre, title, titlo, and titulus.
From Middle English titillen, tytyllen, perhaps variants of Middle English tutelen (“to whisper, chatter”), from tutel (“mouth”), from Old English *tūtel, *tȳtel, related to Old Frisian tūte (“mouth”). Compare Middle English touten (“to jut out, project, protrude”), Middle English toute (“projection, mound, hill”), Middle Dutch tûte (whence modern Dutch tuit (“spout, nozzle, nose, point, peak, summit”)), Old Norse túta (“a teat-like prominence”), Danish tude (“spout”).
Webster’s 1913
Etymology [OE. titel, titil, apparently a dim. of tit, in the sense of small; cf. G. tüttel a tittle, dim. of OHG. tutta teat. Perhaps, however, the same word as title, n.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “tittle”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details