Word.ws English Dictionary

ditty

/ˈdɪti/

ditty noun: a short, simple verse or song. Also the ellipsis of ditty bag.

Noun

ditty (plural ditties)

  1. A short, simple verse or song.
    • religious, martial, or civil ditties[1644], [John Milton], Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib, [London]: […] [Thomas Underhill and/or Thomas Johnson], →OCLC
    • And to the warbling lute soft ditties sing.1636, G[eorge] S[andys], “(please specify the page)”, in A Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David. And upon the Hymnes Dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments, London: [Andrew Hebb […]], →OCLC
  2. A saying or utterance, especially one that is short and frequently repeated.
    • O, too high ditty for my simple rime.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 50

Verb

ditty (third-person singular simple present ditties, present participle dittying, simple past and past participle dittied)

  1. (archaic, intransitive, obsolete) To sing; to warble a little tune.
    • Beasts fain would sing; birds ditty to their notes.[1633], George Herbert, edited by [Nicholas Ferrar], The Temple. Sacred Poems, and Private Ejaculations, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel; and are to be sold by Francis...

Also used as

ditty is also the ellipsis of ditty bag.

Forms of ditty

Noun
pluralditties
Verb
third-person singular presentditties
present participledittying
past participledittied
pastdittied

Plural of ditty: ditties

Origin of ditty

From Middle English dite, ditee, from Old French ditie or dité, from ditier, from Latin dictāre (participle dictatus).

Phrases with ditty

Words that rhyme with ditty

24 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ditty

What does ditty mean?
Ditty means a short, simple verse or song.
What part of speech is ditty?
Ditty can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce ditty?
Ditty is pronounced /ˈdɪti/ (UK).
What is the plural of ditty?
The plural of ditty is ditties.

Words near ditty in the dictionary

  1. dittons
  2. dittos
  3. dittoship
  4. Dittrick
  5. Dittricks
  6. ditty
  7. ditty bag
  8. ditty bags
  9. ditty box
  10. ditty boxes
  11. dittying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ditty (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ditty.ogg, en-uk-ditty.ogg.

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