tittle

plural tittles

1. mediaAny 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.

   (the page calls both "a superscript sign (hooklike)" and also a diacritical abbreviation of "er" (er) "tittles")

   1987, Andrea van Arkel-De Leeuw van Weenen, Möðruvallabók, AM 132 Fol: Index and concordance, page xii

   3 more examples

   The foure pricks or tittles are these. The first is a full prick or period. The second is a comma or crooked tittle.

   1590, Bales, The Arte of Brachygraphie (quoted in Daid King's 2001 'The Ciphers of the Monks')

   The words "jot" and "tittle" in this passage refer to diacritic marks, that is, dashes, dots, or commas added to a letter to accentuate the pronunciation.

   1965, P. A. Marijnen, The Encyclopedia of the Bible

   A tittle is more or less the same thing (the dot over an i, for instance), except that it can be traced back to Medieval Latin for a little mark over or under a letter, such as an accent ague or a cedilla. I don't know whether an umlaut is one or two tittles. Maybe it's a jot and a tittle side by side.

   2008, Roy Blount, Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters

2. broadlyA small, insignificant amount (of something); a modicum or speck.

   1 more example

   I am living fast to see the time when a book that misses its tide shall be neglected, as the moon by day, or like mackerel a week after the season. No man has more nicely observed our climate than the bookseller who bought the copy of this work; he knows to a tittle what subjects will best go off in a dry year, and which it is proper to expose foremost when the weather-glass is fallen to much rain.

   1704, Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub

present singular third person tittles · participle present tittling · participle past tittled · past tittled

1. ScotlandTo chatter.

1. A surname.