WORD OF THE DAY: TITTLE
noun | TITT-ul
Used chiefly in British English, tittle refers to a very small part or amount; it is often paired with the word jot. In writing and printing on both sides of the pond, tittle also refers to a point or small sign used as a diacritical mark.
// There is not a jot or tittle of evidence to support their claims.
EXAMPLE OF TITTLE
“First-class engineering allows the listener to savour every sonic jot and tittle.” — Clive Paget, The Guardian (London), 13 Feb. 2026
DID YOU KNOW?
When most of us dot our i’s and cross our t’s, our minds are with the words we are writing rather than the anatomy of the letters we employ. But those dots and crosses? The types who love type have names for them. The mark that sits above the lowercase i (as well as j) is known as a “tittle”. Tittle comes from the Medieval Latin noun titulus, meaning “title,” and has also been used over the centuries for diacritical marks including tildes, as well as any small mark or sign in writing or printing—hence the figurative use of tittle to refer to a very small part of something. For those curious about additional letter components, stroke refers to one of the lines that form a letter, including the horizontal lines that mark the lowercase letters t and f (which may be described more specifically as a “cross strokes”). Typographers even have a word for the negative space enclosed by strokes, such as the hole in the letter o: it’s known as a “counter.”
Merriam Webster Dictionary
