Meanings
- abbreviationinitialismInitialism of ta-ta for now; goodbye.
1974: Tigger (voiced by Paul Winchell) in Unbouncing Tigger – Well, I gotta go, now! I got a lot of bouncing to do! Hoo-hoo-hoo! TTFN! Ta ta for now!
2 more examples
1941-1945: (A catchphrase of Mrs Mopp (Dorothy Summers) in several series of the weekly topical comedy British radio programme It's That Man Again (ITMA))
1966: Catwoman (played by Julie Newmar) in the Batman episode "Better Luck Next Time" – Catwoman: "'TTFN", Batman: "What does that mean?", Catwoman: "Ta-ta for now."
Synonyms: TT4N
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
In 1939, initialisms, previously rarely used except by the military, were heard more frequently by the British public. ITMA satirised them by coining TTFN, a "pointless" initialism (no easier to say than the phrase on which it was based) to use as a catchphrase, which became widely repeated in the UK. Thirty years later, American ventriloquist Paul Winchell, following the suggestion of his third wife, Jean Freeman, who was British, improvised it as a signature phrase for the (originally British) character Tigger in the Disney films based on A. A. Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner. This, in a world now accustomed to them, popularised worldwide a word originally coined to make fun of initialisms.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
TTFN. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/TTFN
“TTFN.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/TTFN. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “TTFN,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/TTFN.
Source: TTFN on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.