tootle
Americanverb (used without object)
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to toot gently or repeatedly on a flute or the like.
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to move or proceed in a leisurely way.
noun
verb
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of tootle
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.
See Examples For:
In the end it would be Boxing Day 2021, three months later, before he could return to the Forest of Dean, and "tootle down" the track where he'd injured himself.
From BBC ● Aug. 24, 2025
Up the river we tootle, our pirate-garbed captain pointing out landmarks along the way.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 7, 2019
Most of the time, you will just tootle around town with it, doing really simple things.
From The Verge ● Dec. 19, 2018
As a native Chicagoan who has watched the Rams tootle around UC Irvine in their golf carts, I have to wonder what Dick Butkus would say if he saw them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 3, 2017
During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to move.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
The orchestra, meanwhile, tootled unrelated instrumental parts; lighting changed at random; and the backdrops, going up and down on squeaky pulleys, added inapt settings.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 19, 2018
I didn’t play on the A side, but I played bass on the B side while my uncle tootled along on harp.
From Salon ● Nov. 30, 2015
Not so long ago, Americans who tootled around foreign countries in athletic attire earned a tourist badge of dishonor.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2015
After dinner on a warmish weeknight—57 degrees in Ann Arbor—a junior picked up his trumpet and tootled a bit of Glenn Miller from his window, just to relax.
From Slate ● May 9, 2013
She tootled up and down the shoreline, kicking at the waves and exhausting herself with joy.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Upstairs, Zella Powers, 85, worked on one of the library’s public computers, just reading the news, tootling around, one of a few dozen people a day who come to use the library’s internet.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 13, 2023
Angela Lansbury is a tweedy country eccentric in wartime England, tootling around on a bronchitic sidecar motorbike and receiving mysterious parcels from a professor in London.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2022
And what a renewal it was: roaring whales, bellowing elephants, tootling children and moaning freight trains.
From Scientific American ● Mar. 24, 2022
There comes a point in almost any scheduled performance by Jon Batiste when he pops up from the piano and strides into the crowd, tootling his melodica, a toylike wind instrument, with bandmates in tow.
From New York Times ● Sep. 7, 2015
From then on I went to sleep with the tootling music in my head.
From "Milkweed" by Jerry Spinelli
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.
