tootle

present singular third person tootles · participle present tootling · participle past tootled · past tootled

1. intransitiveTo make a soft toot sound.

   During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to move.

   1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., chapter 3, in Slaughterhouse-Five […] (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   Now the scythe the morn salutes, In the meadow tinkling soon; While on mellow-tootling flutes Sweetly breathes the shepherd’s tune.

   1820, John Clare, “Summer Morning”, in Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, London: Taylor and Hessey, page 145

   We know the old lady is upstairs and that she is quite alone in the house and therefore it would be perfectly useless for her to tootle on her bedroom bell.

   1928, Fred M. White, chapter 27, in The Grey Woman

   Their booth did not have so many customers as did the other booths where the tootling laugh of Maybelle Merriwether sounded and Fanny Elsing’s giggles and the Whiting girls’ repartee made merriment.

   1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, chapter IX, in Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC

2. transitiveTo play (a musical instrument) making such a sound.

   A young, fresh-faced man, sitting by the driver, tootled a tandem horn.

   1917, Horace Annesley Vachell, chapter 11, in Fishpingle: A Romance of the Countryside, New York: George H. Doran, page 204

   1 more example

   […] Cecil can tootle a pretty fair sax, at that, if the play happens to come up.

   1933, Damon Runyon, “Broadway Complex”, in Runyon from First to Last

3. colloquialintransitiveTo go (somewhere); to amble aimlessly.

   I suppose we’d better tootle back to the ballroom.

   1933, Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Queen’s Square”, in A Treasury of Sayers Stories, London: Gollancz, published 1958, page 48

   2 more examples

   ‘When my old bike comes I shall tootle up and down the drive! Some swank!’

   1949, Elsie J. Oxenham, chapter 8, in The Abbey Girls Go Back to School, London: Collins

   I was about to go, I thought I’d tootle down to the Coleherne perhaps, then I wouldn’t be too far away if the bleep went.

   1988, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 10, in The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 221

4. colloquialtransitiveTo transport (someone somewhere).

   Say I pick you up and tootle you over with your hens.

   1953, Angela Thirkell, chapter 3, in Jutland Cottage

   1 more example

   […] he would just see if his shover had enough in the tank to tootle them down to Warborough […]

   1911, Agnes and Egerton Castle, chapter 1, in The Composer, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, page 4

plural tootles

1. A soft toot sound.

   One blast [of the trumpet], and [the sheep] would go here, two and they would go there, some tootles and they would run up the hill, a high note and they would stop short […]

   2009, Mark Helprin, chapter 5, in Digital Barbarism, HarperCollins, page 170

   2 more examples

   1891, Thirteen Essays on Education, London: Percival & Co., E. W. Howson, “The Teaching of Music in Public Schools,” p. 37, No one, least of all those with a musical ear, can take a form or even read a book in close proximity to the ineffectual tootle of a flute, the maddening squeaks of a raw fiddler, or the spasmodic grunts of a euphonium.

   The glamour of the sawdust world, the cheers of the crowd, the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy, the blare and tootle of the midway—he envied the gypsy family, here today and gone tomorrow.

   1958, Eleanor Reindollar Wilcox, chapter 7, in Mr. Sims’ Argosy, New York: Dodd, Mead, page 121

2. colloquialA trip or excursion.

   On weekends you can take a short tootle over to itsy-bitsy Pelican Island on a free ferry […]

   2008, Adam Karlin, “Miami & The Keys”, in Publications, Lonely Planet, page 63

   1 more example

   In between, is Granny May’s only daughter Juliet. A wonderful character who still joins me on the odd tootle.

   1979, Oliver Reed, chapter 4, in Reed All About Me, London: Hodder & Stoughton, published 1981, page 62

plural Tootles

1. A surname.