Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A top, usually having four lettered sides, that is used to play various games of chance.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See the extract.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A child's toy, somewhat resembling a top, and twirled by the fingers.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun historical A toy (
top ) similar to adreidel .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a conical child's plaything tapering to a steel point on which it can be made to spin
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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A round teetotum revolving on its point represents the sky turning on its axis, the two points of the teetotum are the two poles; the child will be delighted to find one of them, and I show him the tail of the Little bear.
Emile Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1745
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Back in 1965, I read the rules to a game published in 1880 that said one could use a “12-sided teetotum” instead of a 6-sided die, for resolving odds of 6: 1, 7: 1 etc up to 11: 1, but did not explain what a teetotum was or how to make one.
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The five days needed to reach it after it first appeared on the horizon had been fraught with danger: a dozen rapids, violent eddies that whirled the Explorer around “like a teetotum,” interspersed with innumerable reaches through which the boat had to be towed by a dozen men hauling upon fraying ropes or by a battered skiff with splintered oars.
Colossus Michael Hiltzik 2010
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The five days needed to reach it after it first appeared on the horizon had been fraught with danger: a dozen rapids, violent eddies that whirled the Explorer around “like a teetotum,” interspersed with innumerable reaches through which the boat had to be towed by a dozen men hauling upon fraying ropes or by a battered skiff with splintered oars.
Colossus Michael Hiltzik 2010
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Not that I bear him a grudge, much, for he was a jolly little teetotum, bursting with good intentions, and you may say it wasn't his fault that they paved my road to Hell - which lay at the bottom of a salt-mine, and it's only by the grace of God that I ain't there yet, entombed in everlasting rock.
Watershed 2010
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I had seen a set of models of the regular polyhedra in my High School trig class, and decided that a “12-sided teetotum” must be the 12-sdied thingy (a regular dodecahedron) I had seen in the set.
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While heaping these compliments on Mr Flintwinch, he rolled him about with a hand on each of his shoulders, until the staggerings of that gentleman, who under the circumstances was dryer and more twisted than ever, were like those of a teetotum nearly spent.
Little Dorrit 2007
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But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam below, and the hole was left empty in an instant: and then down rushed the water into the hole, in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast as a teetotum.
The Water Babies 2007
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As yet, since I came to full-grown power, I had never met any one whom I could not play teetotum with: but now at last I had found a man whose strength was not to be laughed at.
Lorna Doone Richard Doddridge 2004
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Maurice Mair seemed to spin like a teetotum and pitch upon his face like a ninepin.
treeseed commented on the word teetotum
A teetotum is a form of gambling top. It has a polygonal body marked with letters or numbers, which indicate the result of each spin. In its earliest form the body was square (in some cases via a stick through a regular six-sided die), marked on the four sides by the letters A (Lat. aufer, take) indicating that the player takes one from the pool, D (Lat. depone, put down) when a fine has to be paid, N (Lat. nihil, nothing), and T (Lat. totum, all), when the whole pool is to be taken.
Some accounts give such letters as P, N, D (dimidium, half), and H or T or other combinations of letters.
Other combinations of letters that could be found were:
NG, SZ, TA, TG, NH, ND, M.
Which stood for (In Latin):
ZS - Zona Salve, save all
TA - Tibi Adfer, take all
NH - Nihil Habeas, nothing left
LS - L (i.e., 50) Solve, save 50
ND - Nihil Dabis, nothing happens
Teetotum survives today as dreidel, a Jewish game played on Hanukkah.
_Wikipedia
January 30, 2008
vanishedone commented on the word teetotum
From a quick check, no apparent relationship to teetotal, apart from formal similarity. Hopefully we'll never need an adjective meaning 'of or pertaining to a teetotum'.
January 30, 2008
yarb commented on the word teetotum
The ensuing week went by with a buzz and whirl, circling about Theron Ware's dizzy consciousness like some huge, impalpable teetotum sent spinning under Sister Soulsby's resolute hands.
- Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware, ch. 14
August 2, 2008
MaryW commented on the word teetotum
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883), ch. 33February 10, 2019