Word.ws English Dictionary

tittle-tattle

tittle-tattle noun: petty, idle gossip.

Noun

tittle-tattle (countable and uncountable, plural tittle-tattles)

  1. (uncountable) Petty, idle gossip.
    • Every idle Tittle-tattle that went about, Jack was always ſuſpected for the author of it: […]1733, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], Alexander Pope, compiler, “Law is a Bottomless Pit. Or, The History of John Bull. […]. The Second Part. Chapter XI.”, in Miscellanies, 2nd...
    • She has trouble enough on her hands, with the affairs of that silly young scapegrace, without being pestered by the tittle-tattle of this place. It is all an invention of that fool, Fribsby.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 16, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
  2. An idle, trifling talker; a gossip.
    • If I can once extirpate the race of solid and substantial humdrums, I hope by my wholesome and repeated advices, quickly to reduce the insignificant tittle-tattles and matter-of-fact-men that abound in every quarter of this great city.1777, The Tatler; Or, Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq, volume 4, Dublin: W. Whitestone, W. Watson, J. Williams, W. Wilson, edition of The Tatler n° 268 (1710) by Richard Steele, page 324

Verb

tittle-tattle (third-person singular simple present tittle-tattles, present participle tittle-tattling, simple past and past participle tittle-tattled)

  1. To engage in gossip.
    • ‘I hope you two have been mewed in with that old pussy long enough. While you’ve been tittle-tattling I’ve been doing, — listen to what this bobby’s got to say.’1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle
  2. To spread gossip.

tittle-tattle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

tittle-tattle in Hindi

tittle-tattle
गपशप gapśap

tittle-tattle in Tamil

உளறல், பயனிலர்பேச்சு, உளறு

tittle-tattle in Urdu

tittle-tattle
گپ شپ gap-śap

tittle-tattle in Malayalam

rumours, gossip, idle talk
വ്യഥാസല്ലാപം, വെടിപറച്ചിൽ, വെടിവട്ടം, കണ്ടതും കേട്ടതും പറച്ചിൽ, അപവാദം, പരദൂഷണം
spread rumours, gossip, spread gossip
വെടിപറയുക, കണ്ടതും കേട്ടതും പറയുക, വ്യാജവാർത്ത പരത്തുക, കിംവദന്തി പരത്തുക, അപവാദം പറഞ്ഞുണ്ടാക്കുക, കുപ്രചരണം നടത്തുക
More languagesFewer languages
tittle-tattle in Kannada
ಕಾಡುಹರಟೆ, ಬೇರೊಬ್ಬರ ವಿಚಾರ ಮಾತನಾಡುವುದು

Forms of tittle-tattle

Noun
pluraltittle-tattles
Verb
third-person singular presenttittle-tattles
present participletittle-tattling
past participletittle-tattled
pasttittle-tattled

Origin of tittle-tattle

Reduplication of tattle.

Words formed from tittle-tattle

Questions about tittle-tattle

What does tittle-tattle mean?
Tittle-tattle means petty, idle gossip.
What is tittle-tattle in Hindi?
Tittle-tattle in Hindi is गपशप (gapśap). See Tittle-tattle meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is tittle-tattle?
Tittle-tattle can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of tittle-tattle?
The plural of tittle-tattle is tittle-tattles.

Words near tittle-tattle in the dictionary

  1. tittivates
  2. tittivating
  3. tittivation
  4. tittivations
  5. tittle
  6. tittle-tattle
  7. tittle-tattled
  8. tittle-tattler
  9. tittle-tattlers
  10. tittle-tattles
  11. tittle-tattling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tittle-tattle (page history and authors); गपशप (Hindi) (page history and authors); tittle-tattle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); گپ شپ (Urdu) (page history and authors); tittle-tattle (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); tittle-tattle (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: “tittle-tattle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tittle-tattle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.