Word.ws English Dictionary

tottle

UK/ˈtɒt.əl/US/ˈtɑ.təl/

tottle verb: to walk in a wavering, unsteady manner.

Verb (1)

tottle (third-person singular simple present tottles, present participle tottling, simple past and past participle tottled)

  1. (colloquial, intransitive) To walk in a wavering, unsteady manner.
    • I should not, however, so much mind if this folly [of giving children poetic names] were comprised in that domain of cold gentility, to which affectation usually confines itself. One does not regard seeing Miss Arabella seated at the piano, or her little sister Leonora tottling across the carpet to...1870, Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery

Verb (2)

tottle (third-person singular simple present tottles, present participle tottling, simple past and past participle tottled)

  1. (archaic, dialectal) To add up; to sum to a total.
    • It may be that the days o' fine follow ane anither fast; or that the foul times linger likewise. But in the end, the figures of fine and foul tottle up, in accord wi' their ordered sum.1902, Bram Stoker, The Mystery of the Sea, page 38

Noun

tottle (plural tottles)

  1. A container, generally of plastic, which is not a simple tube and which is kept with its cap down.

Proper noun capitalized: Tottle

Tottle (plural Tottles)

  1. A surname from Old English.

Forms of tottle

Verb
third-person singular presenttottles
present participletottling
past participletottled
pasttottled
Noun
pluraltottles
Proper noun
pluralTottles

Origin of tottle

Compare toddle and totter.

From total.

Blend of tube + bottle.

Words formed from tottle

Questions about tottle

What does tottle mean?
Tottle means to walk in a wavering, unsteady manner.
What part of speech is tottle?
Tottle can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tottle?
Tottle is pronounced /ˈtɒt.əl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of tottle?
The past tense of tottle is tottled.

Words near tottle in the dictionary

  1. Tottin
  2. totting
  3. totting up
  4. tottings
  5. Tottington
  6. tottle
  7. tottled
  8. tottles
  9. tottling
  10. tottlish
  11. Totton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tottle (page history and authors); Tottle (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: “tottle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tottle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.