Ditto

How to spell ditto

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ditto

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ditto mean?

1. nounThe same thing repeated, used to avoid writing or saying it again.
2. verbTo repeat or copy something that has already been stated.

Ditto in a sentence

• noun

  She signed the bottom of the form and wrote ditto on the line above.

• verb

  The printer can ditto the original page exactly when more copies are needed.

• noun

  The ledger used a ditto mark to repeat the date in every row.

• verb

  Rather than retype the clause, the clerk would ditto it in each contract.

Where does ditto come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This little word came into English in the early 1600s straight from Italian, where ditto was a Tuscan dialect form of detto, meaning 'said' or 'the aforesaid'. That word descends from the Latin dictus, the past participle of dicere, which meant 'to say' or 'to speak'. Italian merchants and clerks used ditto in account books and dated lists to avoid repeating the name of a month or item already written above, a sense of 'the same as said before'. English borrowed exactly that bookkeeping habit, and from there ditto came to mean any repeated item, eventually spreading into casual speech as a way of saying 'me too' or 'same here'. The very same Latin dicere root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'dictate', 'dictionary', and 'verdict', all tied to the idea of speaking or saying.

How the word is built

• ditto (Tuscan Italian variant of detto: 'said', past participle of dire 'to say')