teetotum

Dictionary: tee·to·tum (tē-tō'təm) pronunciation

n.
A top, usually having four lettered sides, that is used to play various games of chance.

[From earlier T totum (from the letter tee that appeared on one side of the toy), from totum, teetotum, from Latin tōtum, neuter sing. of tōtus, all.]

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Wordsmith Words: teetotum

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(tee-TO-tuhm)

noun
A spinning top.

Etymology
From T-totum. Originally a teetotum was a kind of die used in a game of chance. It had a stick put through a six-sided die so that only four sides could be used. One of the sides had the letter T representing Latin totum (all), implying take the whole stake from the pot. Other sides had letters A aufer (take one stake from the pot), D depone (put one stake), and N nihil (do nothing). A dreidel is a form of teetotum

A picture of a teetotum antiquegamblingchips.com/site/PutTakeForSale.jpg.

Usage
"In 1890s London, George Bernard Shaw's music reviews frequently took ballet to task. How weary he was of illogical plots and the empty virtuosity of what he referred to as 'teetotum spins'." — Deborah Jowitt; Nothing Left to Lose; The Village Voice (New York); Jan 18, 2000.

WordNet: teetotum

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a conical child's plaything tapering to a steel point on which it can be made to spin
Synonyms: top, whirligig, spinning top

Wikipedia: Teetotum

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A girl holding up a teetotum on Pieter Brueghel's Children's Games (1560)

A teetotum (T-Totum) is a form of gambling top. It has a polygonal body marked with letters or numbers, which indicate the result of each spin. In its earliest form the body was square (in some cases via a stick through a regular six-sided die ^[1]), marked on the four sides by the letters A (Lat. aufer, take) indicating that the player takes one from the pool, D (Lat. depone, put down) when a fine has to be paid, N (Lat. nihil, nothing), and T (Lat. totum, all), when the whole pool is to be taken.

Joseph Strutt, who was born in 1749, mentions the teetotum as used in games when he was a boy^[2].

Other accounts give such letters as P, N, D (dimidium, half), and H or T or other combinations of letters.

Other combinations of letters that could be found were:

NG, SZ, TA, TG, NH, ND, M.

Which stood for (In Latin):

ZS - Zona Salve, save all

TA - Tibi Adfer, take all

NH - Nihil Habeas, nothing left

LS - L (i.e., 50) Solve, save 50

ND - Nihil Dabis, nothing happens

Teetotum survives today as dreidel, a Jewish game played on Hanukkah. Some modern teetotums have six or eight sides, such as the commercial game Put & Take.

References

Notes

Teetotum is mentioned in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 5: "'Are you a child or a Teetotum?' the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of needles."

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
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		WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Teetotum". Read more
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teetotum

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