teetotum

American  

[tee-toh-tuhm] / tiˈtoʊ təm /

noun

1. any small top spun with the fingers.

2. a kind of die having four sides, each marked with a different initial letter, spun with the fingers in an old game of chance.

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teetotum British  

/ tiːˈtəʊtəm /

noun

1. a spinning top bearing letters of the alphabet on its four sides

2. such a top used as a die in gambling games

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Etymology

Origin of teetotum

1710–20; earlier T totum, alteration of totum name of toy (< Latin tōtum, neuter of tōtus all) by prefixing its initial letter, which appeared on one side of the toy

Example Sentences

Though no disturbance was reported last week at Brooklyn's Evergreen Cemetery, by rights Anthony Comstock should have been spinning like a teetotum in his grave.

From Time Magazine Archive

We had not been in the South Basin many minutes when the chaplain of The Missions to Seamen was among us with his witty stories and, I believe, his put-and-take teetotum.

From The Bonadventure A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday by Blunden, Edmund

Here, Mother, where did you get this teetotum?

From Chicken Little Jane on the Big John by Ritchie, Lily Munsell

“What right have you to try and supplant the servant of the house, who specially went out about it, you little meddlesome teetotum, I’d like to know, hey?”

From Fritz and Eric The Brother Crusoes by Hutcheson, John C. (John Conroy)

And so on ad nauseam till my brains were all in a whirl, and at night I dreamt I was a teetotum, and people were playing with me.

From The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan by Stables, Gordon