[f. TOOTLE v.]
1. An act or the action of tootling or sounding a horn or similar wind-instrument.
1852. R. S. Surtees, Sponge’s Sp. Tour, xli. Bragg’s queer tootle of his horn … now sounded at the low end of the cover.
1889. Scott. Leader, 6 Dec., 5. The sudden and shrill tootle of a trumpet.
1894. Daily News, 12 March, 2/1. The guard’s inspiriting tootle wakes the echoes.
2. Speech or writing of more sound than sense; verbiage, twaddle.
1883. Cornh. Mag., May, 542. Sometimes … the tootle becomes a middle in a weekly paper, sometimes it assumes the guise of an amusing review.
1888. Scott. Leader, 8 March, 7. The good old order of English prose which used to be called at the English Universities ‘tootle,’ and for which there are other names, older and more recent, but hardly any more expressive.
So Tootle-te-tootle, Tootle-tootle, a piece of continuous tootling.
1855. Browning, Up at a Villa, ix. Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
1884. Pall Mall G., 24 July, 4/2. The musical powers of most of the bands, whom no amount of entreaty could divert even for a moment from their prearranged and wholly meaningless tootle-ti-tootle.
1910. Sat. Rev., 10 Sept., 322/1. Footle-footle-footle goes the clarinet with a fragment of a theme; tootle-tootle-tootle echoes the flute.
