Word.ws English Dictionary

tot

/tɒt//tɑt/

tot noun: a small child. Also the ellipsis of tater tot.

Noun (1)

tot (plural tots)

  1. A small child.
    • He learned to run when he was just a tot.
    • When I was but a tiny tot, I knocked the neighbors cold / For I became to walk when I was scarcely one year old1907, Dave Reed Jr, “You'll Have to Get Off and Walk: Comic Novelty Song and Refrain”, M. Witmark & Sons
    Synonyms:
    toddler
  2. A small amount of liquor, (particularly) a small measure of rum.
    • Then I give them a tot of rum apiece, as they sit huddled in their blankets.1897, Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa
    • And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep.1916, Siegfried Sassoon, The Working Party
    Synonyms:
    nip
  3. (Barbados) A small cup, usually made of tin.
  4. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) A foolish fellow.
    • Whoe answeared like a toute, or a maddman, as he was, that he was for the Kinge.a. 1660, A Contemporary History Of Affairs In Ireland

Verb

tot (third-person singular simple present tots, present participle totting, simple past and past participle totted)

  1. To sum or total.
    • There are, of course, many ways to proceed from here, the most likely being that you, as an experienced tradesman, would simply know what these amounts come to (in terms of groups of ten) and can tot them up in your head.2017, Paul Lockhart, Arithmetic
  2. (UK, historical) To mark (a debt) with the word tot (Latin for "so much"), indicating that it was good or collectible for the amount specified.
    • a totted debt

Noun (2)

tot (plural tots)

  1. A total, an addition of a long column of figures.

Proper noun capitalized: TOT

TOT

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Trail of Tears.

Noun (3) capitalized: TOT

TOT (countable and uncountable, plural TOTs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of tip of the tongue.
    • When experiencing a TOT, people not only retrieve a blocked word's sound and meaning; they also know some of its grammatical properties.2001, Daniel L. Schacter, chapter 3, in The Seven Sins of Memory, How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, Houghton Mifflin, →ISBN
  2. (Kenya, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of turnover tax.
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of transfer of technology.
  4. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of time over target
  5. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of time on target

Also used as

tot is also the ellipsis of tater tot.

tot meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Bengali

tot in Hindi

टोट

tot in Tamil

டோட்

tot in Marathi

टोट

tot in Bengali

টোট
More languagesFewer languages
tot in Telugu
టోట్
tot in Malayalam
ടോട്ട്, ടോട്
tot in Kannada
ಟೋಟ್
tot in Punjabi
ਟੋਟ
tot in Gujarati
ટોટ
tot in Odia
ଟୋଟ୍, ଟୋଟ
tot in Nepali
टोट, टोट्

Examples of tot in a sentence

  • As soon as Debbie can tot up the scores, we'll know who won.
  • The bill tots up to 35 euros.
  • Santa found himself with a heaving playgroundful of adoring tots dangling in clusters off his legs.

All 21 example sentences with tot

Synonyms of tot

Forms of tot

Noun
pluraltots
pluralTOTs
Verb
third-person singular presenttots
present participletotting
past participletotted
pasttotted

Plural of tot: tots

Origin of tot

Borrowed from Scots tot, a shortened form of totum (“small child; tot”), of uncertain origin, perhaps shortened from totter (“to move in an unsteady way”), Compare tottle, also Old Norse tottr (“name of a dwarf”), Swedish tutte (“small child”), Danish tommeltot (“little child”).

Clipping of total (“to sum”).

Words formed from tot

Phrases with tot

Words that rhyme with tot

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tot

What does tot mean?
Tot means a small child.
What is tot in Hindi?
Tot in Hindi is टोट. See Tot meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is tot?
Tot can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tot?
Tot is pronounced /tɒt/ (UK).
What is the plural of tot?
The plural of tot is tots.

Words near tot in the dictionary

  1. tosylimines
  2. tosylnucleoside
  3. tosylnucleosides
  4. tosyls
  5. tosylthymidine
  6. tot
  7. tot lot
  8. tot lots
  9. tot up
  10. tota
  11. tota scriptura

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tot (page history and authors); TOT (page history and authors); tot (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tot (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-tot.ogg, en-uk-tot.ogg.

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