Etymology

tittle

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Today it means: 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. Full definition →

Middle English tytle ← Anglo-Norman titil ← Medieval Latin titulus
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tittle · noun1

  1. Latin · derived fromtitulus“title”
  2. Medieval Latin · derived fromtitulus“small stroke, diacritical mark, accent”
  3. Anglo-Norman · derived fromtitil
  4. Middle English · inherited fromtytle
  5. English todaytittle

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.

tittle · verb2

  1. Old English · derived from*tūtel
  2. Middle English · inherited fromtitillen
  3. English todaytittle

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”).

Words from the same roots

Latintitulus all →

titletildejot and tittletitulus

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.