teetotum
Americannoun
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any small top spun with the fingers.
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a kind of die having four sides, each marked with a different initial letter, spun with the fingers in an old game of chance.
noun
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a spinning top bearing letters of the alphabet on its four sides
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such a top used as a die in gambling games
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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
I always introduce the teetotum when I want to be merry.”
From Tales from Blackwood Volume 4 by Various
As the train steamed out of the station, she howled like a wounded animal, spinning round like a teetotum, and waving her hands and arms wildly.
From Changing Winds A Novel by St. John G. (St. John Greer) Ervine
He spun round and round like a teetotum, and stooped whenever an attempt was made to draw him down, but still the arm remained extended.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846 by Various
A teetotum is so called because it has, or once had, on one of its sides, a T standing for totum, all.
From The Romance of Words (4th ed.) by Ernest Weekley
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
