Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small four-sided toy of the top kind, used by children in a very old game of chance.
  • noun A similar toy used for spinning in the same manner, but circular or having an indefinite number of sides, and without the marks above described: used as a plaything or in different games by children.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • I took a random shot at the entire group just as it was making a masterly evolution; and a drake, evidently the general commanding, having ceased his quacking, and tumbling in tee-totum style to the water, sufficiently proved how correctly I had, for the first time, done my duty.

    A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden 2nd edition William A. Ross

  • We are willing, in the spirit of that answer, to say that the Themis of Westminster Hall is the best fitted to preside over the administration of the larger, and more fertile country of beef and pudding; while she of the tee-totum

    Political Pamphlets George Saintsbury 1889

  • The town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences.

    Bleak House Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 1853

  • The town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences.

    Bleak House Charles Dickens 1841

  • In the same quarter a pigeon box, reared on a post, and resembling a huge tee-totum, is visible, and about its several doors and

    Swallow Barn, or A Sojourn in the Old Dominion. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. 1832

  • At the same moment, the man with the teetotum predilection, set himself to spinning around the apartment, with immense energy, and with arms outstretched at right angles with his body; so that he had all the air of a tee-totum in fact, and knocked everybody down that happened to get in his way.

    The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4 Edgar Allan Poe 1829

  • I call him the tee-totum because, in fact, he was seized with the droll but not altogether irrational crotchet, that he had been converted into a tee-totum.

    The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4 Edgar Allan Poe 1829

  • Boullard was a madman, and a very silly madman at best; for who, allow me to ask you, ever heard of a human tee-totum?

    The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4 Edgar Allan Poe 1829

  • For, tho 'like a tee-totum, I'm all in a twirl; --

    The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes Thomas Moore 1815

  • Themis is worshipped in Westminster Hall, and that her adorers cannot be too zealous in her service; while she, whose image an ingenious artist has depicted balancing herself upon a _tee-totum_ on the southern window of the Parliament House of Edinburgh, is a mere idol, -- a Diana of Ephesus, -- whom her votaries worship, either because her shrine brings great gain to the craftsmen, or out of an ignorant and dotard superstition, which induces them to prefer the old Scottish

    Political Pamphlets George Saintsbury 1889

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