Word.ws English Dictionary

trittle trattle

trittle trattle noun: nonsense; foolish talk, idle chatter, or meaningless trifle.

Noun (1)

trittle trattle (plural trittle trattles)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, slang) Nonsense; foolish talk, idle chatter, or meaningless trifle.
    • Your wife is now well at Penshurst; the small-pox hath but kissed her face. Post-script.—I pray leave your “trittle trattle trollilollies and come to us.”1628/1897, Hamilton, William Douglas, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles I, 1628 - 1629 Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office....
    • “Now trittle trattle trollylow,” Quoth the third man, “thou does but mow!”1876, Morley, Henry, Cassell's library of English literature, selected, ed. and arranged by Henry Morley, page 148
    Synonyms:
    drivel
  2. (dialectal, obsolete, slang) Cheap, tawdry trinkets or nick-nacks; worthless small items one might buy at a market.
    • At the fair I had spent all my silver, buying of trittle-trattles at the lucky-booths and about the market-stalls.1896, Crockett Grey Man, Kcb.
    Synonyms:
    trinkum-trankum

Noun (2) capitalized: Trittle Trattle

Trittle Trattle (plural Trittle Trattles)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of trittle trattle.

Examples of trittle trattle in a sentence

  • The admonitions of her visitor “she scorned in a headful laughter,” and called his ghostly counsel “Trittle Trattle.”1913, Roughead, William, Twelve Scots Trials, page 26:
  • Lady Jean was unwilling to cleave to her religion at first throwing the reverend’s proffered bible against the wall and dismissing his preaching as ‘trittle trattle’.2003 June 15, Skelton, Douglas, Deadlier Than The Male Scotland's Most Wicked Women:

Synonyms of trittle trattle

Forms of trittle trattle

pluraltrittle trattles
pluralTrittle Trattles

Origin of trittle trattle

A Scots and dialectal English term stemming from the verb trattle (to prattle/chatter) and related to "trinkum-trankum". An earlier version, trittlyl-trattyll, is recorded as early as 1529.

Questions about trittle trattle

What does trittle trattle mean?
Trittle trattle means nonsense; foolish talk, idle chatter, or meaningless trifle.
How do you use trittle trattle in a sentence?
The admonitions of her visitor “she scorned in a headful laughter,” and called his ghostly counsel “Trittle Trattle.”
What part of speech is trittle trattle?
Trittle trattle is a noun.
What is the plural of trittle trattle?
The plural of trittle trattle is trittle trattles.

Words near trittle trattle in the dictionary

  1. tritridecanoin
  2. tritrophic
  3. trits
  4. Tritter
  5. trittkarren
  6. trittle trattle
  7. trittle-trattle
  8. tritto
  9. Tritton
  10. trittyes
  11. trittys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trittle trattle (page history and authors); Trittle Trattle (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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