Tilt

How to spell tilt

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tilt

What does tilt mean?

1. verbTo move or cause to move into a sloping position; to lean to one side.
2. nounA sloping position or the degree to which something leans.

Tilt in a sentence

• verb

  She had to tilt the box to fit it through the doorway.

• noun

  The camera was mounted at a slight tilt to capture the whole room.

• verb

  Strong winds can tilt a poorly anchored fence.

• noun

  A gentle tilt in the floor caused the marble to roll toward the wall.

Where does tilt come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word with roots in Old English. It descends from Middle English tilten, which meant 'to topple over' or 'to cause to fall', and that verb traces back to an Old English root tealt, meaning 'unsteady' or 'tottering'. The earliest sense was about losing balance and overturning, which is why a wobbling or leaning idea still sits at the heart of the modern word. Over the medieval period it picked up the specialist sense of knights charging at one another in a joust, where opponents leaned forward with their lances, and the phrase 'at full tilt' for top speed grew out of that headlong charging. The spelling has stayed admirably simple because the word never passed through French or Latin polishing; it is short, phonetic, and Germanic to the core.

How the word is built

• tilt (single Germanic root: to make unsteady or cause to lean)