Tot

How to spell tot

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tot

What does tot mean?

1. nounA very young child; a toddler.
2. nounA small measure or shot of an alcoholic spirit.
3. verbTo add up numbers or figures, usually followed by 'up'.

Tot in a sentence

• noun

  The nursery looks after every tot from breakfast until late afternoon.

• noun

  He poured himself a small tot of brandy before the meal.

• verb

  At the end of the day she would tot up the takings from the till.

• noun

  She carried the sleeping tot up the stairs to bed.

• noun

  The sailors were once given a daily tot of rum.

• verb

  Let me tot up these receipts before we file the expenses.

Where does tot come from?

Language of origin: Other

The 'small child' sense of tot appeared in English around the 1700s and is of uncertain origin; it may be related to dialect and Scandinavian words for something small or a small lump, with possible links to Old Norse, but the trail is not firmly documented. The drinking sense, a tot of spirits, grew from the idea of a tiny measure and was in use by the early 1800s. The verb sense, meaning to add up a column of figures, is a clipped form of 'total', itself from Latin totus meaning 'whole' or 'entire', and the phrase 'tot up' became common in British accounting and shopkeeping during the 1700s. So one short spelling carries three strands: a small person, a small drink, and the act of summing things whole. Because all three are spelled identically and pronounced the same, the word stays compact and easy, with no silent letters or doubled consonants to trip a writer.

How the word is built

• tot (single root word; in the 'tot up' sense, an informal shortening of 'total')