tittle
See also: Tittle
English
WOTD – 30 May 2009
Lowercase i and j, with tittles in red.
Etymology
From Medieval Latin titulus (“small stroke, diacritical mark, accent”), from Latin titulus (“title”).
Pronunciation
- (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈtɪt.əl/
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun
tittle (plural tittles)
- A small, insignificant amount (of something); a modicum or speck.
- (typography) Any small dot, stroke, or diacritical mark, especially if part of a letter, or if a letter-like abbreviation; in particular, the dots over the Latin letters i and j.
- 1590, Bales, The Arte of Brachygraphie (quoted in Daid King's 2001 'The Ciphers of the Monks'):
- The foure pricks or tittles are these. The first is a full prick or period. The second is a comma or crooked tittle.
- 1965, P. A. Marijnen, The Encyclopedia of the Bible:
- 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.
- 1987, Andrea van Arkel-De Leeuw van Weenen, Möðruvallabók, AM 132 Fol: Index and concordance, page xii:
- (the page calls both "a superscript sign (hooklike)" and also a diacritical abbreviation of "er" (er#Icelandic) "tittles")
- 2008, Roy Blount, Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters:
- 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.
- 1590, Bales, The Arte of Brachygraphie (quoted in Daid King's 2001 'The Ciphers of the Monks'):
Synonyms
- See also Thesaurus:modicum.
Related terms
- iota
- titlo
Translations
a small amount
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dot on i and j
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See also
- tittle-tattle
- title