Word.ws English Dictionary

ditton

UK/ˈdɪtən/

ditton noun: a motto or saying.

Noun

ditton (plural dittons)

  1. (Scotland, obsolete) A motto or saying.
    • Nekeb : this is a ditch, where we may conceive Jordan was let out for the more convenient watering of other ground. And have we not more then twenty Dittons or Ditch-tons on the ſame occaſion in England?1650, Thomas Fuller, A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof, London, page 105
    • Theſe Dittons ſerve ofttimes to inſtruct us, what is the true Bearing : Thus the Earle of Glencairn’s Ditton, Fork over fork, ſhowes that his Bearing is a Fork, and not an Epiſscopal Pale, as ſome would have it :[…]1680, George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, chapter XXXII, in Observations Upon the Laws and Customs of Nations, as to Precedency, Edinburgh, page 97

Proper noun capitalized: Ditton

Ditton (countable and uncountable, plural Dittons)

  1. A suburb of Widnes, Halton borough, Cheshire, England (OS grid ref SJ4885).
  2. A village and civil parish in Tonbridge and Malling borough, Kent, England (OS grid ref TQ7158).
  3. A suburb of Slough, Berkshire, England (OS grid ref SU9978).
  4. (countable) A habitational surname from Old English.

Forms of ditton

Noun
pluraldittons
Proper noun
pluralDittons

Origin of ditton

Borrowed from French dicton (“saying, maxim, proverb, adage”), from Latin dictum. First attested in the late 16th century.

From Old English dīċ (“ditch, trench, moat”) + tūn (“enclosure; settlement”); compare the doublet Deighton.

Words formed from ditton

Questions about ditton

What does ditton mean?
Ditton means a motto or saying.
What part of speech is ditton?
Ditton can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ditton?
Ditton is pronounced /ˈdɪtən/ (UK).
What is the plural of ditton?
The plural of ditton is dittons.

Words near ditton in the dictionary

  1. dittoing
  2. dittoism
  3. dittoisms
  4. dittologies
  5. dittology
  6. ditton
  7. Ditton Priors
  8. Dittonian
  9. dittons
  10. dittos
  11. dittoship

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ditton (page history and authors); Ditton (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ditton.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ditton. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.