Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A top, usually having four lettered sides, that is used to play various games of chance.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. See the extract.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A child's toy, somewhat resembling a top, and twirled by the fingers.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a conical child's plaything tapering to a steel point on which it can be made to spin
Etymologies
- From earlier T totum (from the letter tee that appeared on one side of the toy), from totum, teetotum, from Latin tōtum, neuter sing. of tōtus, all. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Maurice Mair seemed to spin like a teetotum and pitch upon his face like a ninepin.”
“But for some odd reason, it was at that very instant that the priest in sheer perversity spun round like a teetotum, turned his back on the corpse, and looked peeringly in the very opposite direction.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘teetotum’.
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Spinning
This list is basically an excuse for me to list the word wool four times in a row.
wool, spin, spinning, cotton, scribble, scribbler, scribbling, spindle whorl, spindlewhorl, card, card-clothing, carding-machine and 68 more...
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and ...
Words that, as I see it, have some fond connection to the Alice stories through their creation or particular use by Lewis Carroll. I mean to tie them all together with contexty comments!
alice, daisy-chain, white rabbit, waistcoat-pocket, rabbit-hole, marmalade, antipathy, antipode, curtsey, dinah, tea-time, rat-hole and 232 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (T)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
tabard, tadpole, taffeta, taffy, talisman, tallgrass, tam, tamarind, tamarack, tambourine, tango, tansy and 144 more...
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kmalladi's favorites
edification, penchant, ablution, extricate, frank, triumvirate, trifecta, egregious, hoi polloi, articulate, antediluvian, brusque and 291 more...
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Encountered while reading
snatiation, urodynamics, cadaverine, putrescine, ferret emesis, dracula fish, psychedelic frogfish, mangkorn chomphoo, sengi, blonde-ginger bat, symplectic camel, zeolite and 312 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, T
torquate, thalassocracy, toothsome, travois, tempestuous, tone, tincture, tripwire, tether, trill, tenacious, travesty and 355 more...
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BetaRish's Words
brigand, teetotum, internship, thribble, neologism, readies, resfest, tohubohu, tanzen, regression, nutlet, bandolier and 111 more...
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Kaichi's Wordie Darlings, or I'm a Lo...
persnickety, discombobulated, braggadoccio, anthropomorphous, antelucan, confluxible, anomalous, poseur, gallivant, poppycock, falderal, gewgaw and 705 more...
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Useful Words
I can use these.
aptronym, haplology, ectopia, folderol, volute, caryatid, spandrel, pendulous, miasmic, gelid, dotty, anomie and 257 more...
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lovely & attractive
shellac, flimflammed, verisimilitude, necromancer, wax, behemoth, smarmy, spleen, onomatopoeia, niminy-piminy, nonplus, degringolade and 63 more...
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absquatulate, bloviate, clinchpoop
In which I reveal that, for the most part, I have the sense of humour of a third-grader.
scuttlebutt, fisticuffs, milquetoast, besotted, behemoth, filibuster, verklempt, indefatigable, plenipotentiary, porcine, mitosis, strumpet and 65 more...
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My favourite english words
subjacent, invidious, virtu, overt, quadrangle, deliciously, antithetical, soporific, flummery, amusia, cakewalk, congruence and 65 more...
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free rice
trepang, wain, stenosis, biltong, ablaut, ostler, gorgerin, qindar, hyson, gynoecium, traduce, blenny and 49 more...
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markw's Words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for teetotum.

yarb 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 Aug 2, 2008
vanishedone 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'. Jan 30, 2008
treeseed 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
Jan 30, 2008