Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word tittle. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word tittle, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say tittle in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word tittle you have here. The definition of the word tittle will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition oftittle, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
(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 lettersi 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.
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.
