tittle

From Medieval Latin titulus (“small stroke, diacritical mark, accent”), from Latin titulus (“title”).

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɪt.əl/

• Audio (AU)

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tittle (plural tittles)

1. A small, insignificant amount (of something); a modicum or speck.
2. (typography) Any small dot, stroke, or diacritical mark, especially if part of a letter, or if a letter-like abbreviation; in particular, the dots over the Latin letters i and j.
   • 1590, Bales, The Arte of Brachygraphie (quoted in Daid King's 2001 'The Ciphers of the Monks'):

     The foure pricks or tittles are these. The first is a full prick or period. The second is a comma or crooked tittle.

   • 1965, P. A. Marijnen, The Encyclopedia of the Bible:

     The words "jot" and "tittle" in this passage refer to diacritic marks, that is, dashes, dots, or commas added to a letter to accentuate the pronunciation.

   • 1987, Andrea van Arkel-De Leeuw van Weenen, Möðruvallabók, AM 132 Fol: Index and concordance, page xii:

     (the page calls both "a superscript sign (hooklike)" and also a diacritical abbreviation of "er" (er#Icelandic) "tittles")

   • 2008, Roy Blount, Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters:

     A tittle is more or less the same thing (the dot over an i, for instance), except that it can be traced back to Medieval Latin for a little mark over or under a letter, such as an accent ague or a cedilla. I don't know whether an umlaut is one or two tittles. Maybe it's a jot and a tittle side by side.

• See also Thesaurus:modicum.

• iota
• titlo

• tittle-tattle
• title