Also Sc. tout. [f. TOOT v.2] An act of tooting; a note or short blast of a horn, trumpet, or other wind instrument. Also fig.
1641. D. Ferguson’s Scot. Prov. (1785), 7. A new tout in an old horn.
1714. Ramsay, Elegy on J. Cowper, vi. Fame, Wi’ tout of trumpet, Shall tell.
1721. Kelly, Scot. Prov., 28. An old Tout in a new Horn. Spoken when we hear (perhaps in other words) what we have heard before.
1765. Boswell, in Ramsay, Scot. & Scotsm. (1888), I. ii. 172. James has taken a tout on a new horn.
1787. Burns, Tam Samson’s Elegy, 59. Now he proclaims, wi’ tout o’ trumpet, ‘Tam Samson’s dead!’
1822. Scott, Nigel, xxvii. It is just a new tout on an auld horn.
1874. D. Macrae, Amer. at Home, xlii. 327. She gave two ‘toots’ with her steam-pipe.
b. Reduplicated toot-toot; so toot-tootling.
1883. S. C. Hall, Retrospect, I. 7. How pleasant … the jovial toot-toot of the guard’s horn.
1904. Marie Corelli, God’s Good Man, xx. With a weird toot-tootling of his horn he guided the car at quite a respectable ambling-donkey pace.
1905. Daily Chron., 19 May, 4/7. Of all the noises of London the ‘toot-toot’ of the motor-car is the most hideous.
