different between toot vs tootle

English

Etymology 1

Probably onomatopoetic in origin, compare Dutch toeteren (“to blow a horn”) and German tuten (“to blow a horn”).

Alternative forms

• tout (in some verb senses only)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tu?t/
• IPA^(key): /t?t/ (in sense of "rubbish, tat")
• Rhymes: -u?t
• Rhymes: -?t

Noun

toot (countable and uncountable, plural toots)

1. The noise of a horn or whistle.

2. (by extension, informal) A fart; flatus.
3. (uncountable, slang) Cocaine.
4. (countable, slang) A portion of cocaine that a person snorts.
   • 1981, New York Magazine (volume 14, number 35, page 30)

     So he took a toot. A couple of days later he did another, then another. Soon Harry was using more coke than he had done in his whole life.

5. (informal) A spree of drunkness.
6. (informal, uncountable, pronounced /t?t/) Rubbish; tat.

7. (Internet) A message on the social networking software Mastodon.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

toot (third-person singular simple present toots, present participle tooting, simple past and past participle tooted)

1. To stand out, or be prominent.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Howell to this entry?)

2. To peep; to look narrowly.
   • November 9, 1550, Hugh Latimer, A Sermon preached at Stamford

     In the court, in the noblemen's houses, at every merchant's house, those Observants were spying, tooting, and looking, watching and prying, what they might hear or see against the see of Rome.
3. To see; to spy.
4. (slang) To flatulate.
5. To make the sound of a horn or whistle.
6. To cause a horn or whistle to make its sound.
7. (slang) To go on a drinking binge.
8. (slang) To snort (a recreational drug).
   • 2008, Robert L. Glover, Street Corner Symphony: An American Story (page 65)

     I had graduated from the simple tooting cocaine up my nose to smoking it, which was a completely different experience and animal.

9. To post a message on a Mastodon instance (a self-hosted version of the networking software).

Synonyms

• (to fart): See Thesaurus:flatulate
• (to sound a trumpet etc.): poop (obsolete)

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

Perhaps a contraction of toilet.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?t/
• Rhymes: -?t

Noun

toot (plural toots)

1. (Australia, slang) A toilet.

See also

• toot plant
• toot suite

Anagrams

• Otto, Toto, otto, toto

Westrobothnian

Etymology

Cognate with Swedish tota, dial. tåta.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ù?t

Verb

toot (preterite totä)

1. (with dill) To attempt; to try to imitate as best you can; mimic.

See also

• töt

References

English

Etymology

toot +? -le, frequentative.

Verb

tootle (third-person singular simple present tootles, present participle tootling, simple past and past participle tootled)

1. (intransitive) To make a soft toot sound.
   • 1820, John Clare, “Summer Morning” in Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, London: Taylor and Hessey, p. 145,^[1]

     Now the scythe the morn salutes,

     In the meadow tinkling soon;

     While on mellow-tootling flutes

     Sweetly breathes the shepherd’s tune.

   • 1928, Fred M. White, The Grey Woman, Chapter 27,^[2]

     We know the old lady is upstairs and that she is quite alone in the house and therefore it would be perfectly useless for her to tootle on her bedroom bell.

   • 1936, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York: Macmillan, Part 2, Chapter 9,^[3]

     Their booth did not have so many customers as did the other booths where the tootling laugh of Maybelle Merriwether sounded and Fanny Elsing’s giggles and the Whiting girls’ repartee made merriment.

   • 1969, Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, New York: Dial, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 88,^[4]

     During the night, some of the locomotives began to tootle to one another, and then to move.

2. (transitive) To play (a musical instrument) making such a sound.
   • 1917, Horace Annesley Vachell, Fishpingle: A Romance of the Countryside, New York: George H. Doran, Chapter 11, p. 204,^[5]

     A young, fresh-faced man, sitting by the driver, tootled a tandem horn.

   • 1933, Damon Runyon, “Broadway Complex” in Runyon from First to Last,^[6]

     […] Cecil can tootle a pretty fair sax, at that, if the play happens to come up.

3. (intransitive, colloquial) To go (somewhere); to amble aimlessly.
   • 1933, Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Queen’s Square” in A Treasury of Sayers Stories, London: Gollancz, 1958, p. 48,^[7]

     I suppose we’d better tootle back to the ballroom.

   • 1949, Elsie J. Oxenham, The Abbey Girls Go Back to School, London: Collins, Chapter  8,^[8]

     ‘When my old bike comes I shall tootle up and down the drive! Some swank!’

   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, Penguin, Chapter 10, p. 221,^[9]

     I was about to go, I thought I’d tootle down to the Coleherne perhaps, then I wouldn’t be too far away if the bleep went.

4. (transitive, colloquial) To transport (someone somewhere).
   • 1911, Agnes and Egerton Castle, The Composer, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 1, p. 4,^[10]

     […] he would just see if his shover had enough in the tank to tootle them down to Warborough […]

   • 1953, Angela Thirkell, Jutland Cottage, Chapter 3,^[11]

     Say I pick you up and tootle you over with your hens.

Noun

tootle (plural tootles)

1. A soft toot sound.
   • 1891, Thirteen Essays on Education, London: Percival & Co., E. W. Howson, “The Teaching of Music in Public Schools,” p. 37,^[12]

     No one, least of all those with a musical ear, can take a form or even read a book in close proximity to the ineffectual tootle of a flute, the maddening squeaks of a raw fiddler, or the spasmodic grunts of a euphonium.

   • 1958, Eleanor Reindollar Wilcox, Mr. Sims’ Argosy, New York: Dodd, Mead, Chapter 7, p. 121,^[13]

     The glamour of the sawdust world, the cheers of the crowd, the smell of hot dogs and cotton candy, the blare and tootle of the midway—he envied the gypsy family, here today and gone tomorrow.

   • 2009, Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism, HarperCollins, Chapter 5, p. 170,

     One blast [of the trumpet], and [the sheep] would go here, two and they would go there, some tootles and they would run up the hill, a high note and they would stop short […]

2. (colloquial) A trip or excursion.
   • 1979, Oliver Reed, Reed All About Me, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981, Chapter 4, p. 62,^[14]

     In between, is Granny May’s only daughter Juliet. A wonderful character who still joins me on the odd tootle.

   • 2008, Adam Karlin, Miami & The Keys, Lonely Planet Publications, p. 63,^[15]

     On weekends you can take a short tootle over to itsy-bitsy Pelican Island on a free ferry […]