Etymology: Originally the same word as title n. (see discussion at that entry, especially regarding vowel quantity), with the semantic development influenced by classical Latin titulus title n. in its specific post-classical Latin sense ‘scribal mark, especially one used to abbreviate a word or used as diacritic’; this sense is apparently rare in post-classical Latin and first attested later than the English word (late 13th cent. in continental sources), although earlier currency is probably implied by the use in quot. c1175 and by a parallel borrowing of the Latin word into Old Icelandic (see below).Parallels in foreign languages. Compare the following example of classical Latin titulus with reference to a scribal mark:a1286 G. Balbi Catholicon (1460) at Titulus Titulus eciam dicitur nota que causa breuitatis apponitur dictionibus. Compare Anglo-Norman and Old French title , Middle French tiltre , French titre scribal mark of abbreviation (13th cent.), and also Catalan titlla (late 16th cent.), Spanish tilde (early 15th cent.; < either French or Catalan: see tilde n.), Portuguese til , all in sense ‘small stroke, accent, especially the diacritical mark ~ over n (ñ)’, representing a specific sense development of the Latin noun in the modern Romance languages. Compare also Old Icelandic titull scribal mark of abbreviation (probably 12th cent. in the First Grammatical Treatise (in a manuscript of c1350)). Compare post-classical use of classical Latin titulāre of marking accent in verse (see title v.) and use of Old English getῑtelian and getῑtelod with reference to scribal marks (see respectively title v. 1a and titled adj. 1). Specific senses. In sense 1b originally translating Latin apex ‘point, tip’, applied in classical Latin to any minute point or part of a letter, also to the mark over a long vowel, later also to a line indicating an abbreviation (see apex n.¹). Since apex was used by the Latin grammarians to denote the accent or mark over a long vowel, titulus and apex became to some extent synonymous; hence the Wycliffite Bible's use of tittle n. to translate Latin apex . With the figurative use in sense 2 compare post-biblical Hebrew qōṣ minute amount (in biblical Hebrew in sense ‘thorn’, ‘spiny plant’), represented in Hellenistic Greek by κεραία ‘horn, projecting point’, and in post-classical Latin by apex . Use in hornbooks. In quot. c1175 at sense 1a the ‘tittle’ (standing for est ) comes in a series of symbols, contractions, and non-Roman letters at the end of a list of names of the (Roman) letters of the alphabet, in which it is immediately followed by the contraction for the word ‘Amen’. It is probable that the later appearance of ‘est Amen’ at the end of the hornbook alphabet reflects a continuous tradition of reciting ‘tittle, est, Amen’ in the course of learning the alphabet, and that this came to be reanalysed as a concluding prayer when the original signification was no longer understood (compare tittle est Amen at Phrases 1). An early 15th-cent. manuscript preserved in Samuel Pepys' library appears to show an intermediate stage in this process:a1425 in M. R. James Bibliotheca Pepysiana (1923) III. 122 [The Alphabet ending] z ÷ est amen.For examples of hornbooks on which the later symbol (⋰) appears, see A. W. Tuer Hist. Horn-book (1896) II, cuts 166–8 (on pp. 199–203).

Etymology: Probably a variant of tutel v. Compare tittler n.¹ and the discussion at that entry.

Etymology: Probably an alteration of kittle v.¹ after tickle v.¹ Compare tiddle v.³