Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small diacritic mark, such as an accent, vowel mark, or dot over an i.
  • noun The tiniest bit; an iota.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A stroke over a word or letter to show abbreviation; a dot over a letter, as in i. Compare iota and jot. See tilde, a Spanish form of the same word.
  • noun A very small thing; a minute object or quantity; a particle; a whit.
  • To prate idly; whisper.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A particle; a minute part; a jot; an iota.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small, insignificant amount (of something); a vanishing scintilla; a measly crumb; a minute speck.
  • noun 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.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a tiny or scarcely detectable amount

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English titil, from Medieval Latin titulus, diacritical mark, from Latin, title, superscription.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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

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Examples

Comments

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  • Knowledge to the certainty of which no authority could add, or take away, one jot or tittle. — Huxley

    April 18, 2007

  • It's also the word for the dot on the letter "i."

    December 4, 2007

  • I'm dotless.

    December 4, 2007

  • So those people who never manage to get the dot over the i are tittlelaters?

    December 4, 2007

  • No truth In that at all, just tIttle tattle.

    December 4, 2007

  • That would be tittlelessness.

    December 4, 2007

  • There is only one letter I in Irish; but i is undotted in the traditional uncial Gaelic script to avoid confusion of the tittle with the buailte overdot found over consonants. Modern texts replace the buailte with a h, and use the same antiqua-descendant fonts, which have a tittle, as other Latin-alphabet languages. However, bilingual road signs use dotless i in lowercase Irish text to better distinguish i from í.

    roadsign

    April 12, 2008

  • It prevents a lowercase 'i' form being a lowercase 'l'

    Thank you Wordplayer for this gem.

    January 8, 2012