Tootle v.

[freq. f. TOOT v.² + -LE 4.]

  1.  intr. To toot continuously; to produce a succession of modulated notes on a wind-instrument.

1842.  S. Lover, Handy Andy, xviii. The fifer … tootled with some difficulty.

1878.  Stevenson, Inland Voy., 4. Tootling on the sentimental flute.

1879.  Sala, Paris Herself Again, II. iv. 53. The sable minstrel … begins to tootle most sweetly.

  b.  Of birds: To make a similar noise.

1820.  Clare, Rural Life (ed. 3), 207. When tootling robins carol-welcomes sing. Ibid. (1827), Sheph. Cal., 25. To hear the robin’s note once more, Who tootles while he pecks his meal.

1899.  O. Seaman, In Cap & Bells (1900), 21. The lark is tootling in the sky.

  c.  fig. To write twaddle or mere verbiage.

1883.  [see tootling below].

1894.  Daily News, 28 Feb., 5/1. Mr. Skeat’s ‘Life of Chaucer’ is entirely businesslike. He does not ‘tootle’ over what Chaucer may have done, and seen, and said.

  Hence Tootling vbl. sb. and ppl. a.; also Tootler, a writer of ‘tootle,’ verbiage, or twaddle.

1821.  Clare, Vill. Minstr., I. 30. He heard the tootling robin sound her knell. Ibid., 36. The tuteling fife, and hoarse rap-tapping drum.

1879.  Jefferies, Wild Life in S. C., 105. The tootling of pan-pipes in front of the shows.

1883.  Cornh. Mag., May, 542. The sort of scribblers … whom I am wont to call in my own private dialect the tootlers, that is to say the good folk who write a tootle about nothing in particular. Ibid., 543. The consumer who takes a delight in the perusal of tootling.

  So Tootle-too v., Tootle-tootle v. = TOOTLE v. 1.

1857.  Hughes, Tom Brown, I. v. Here’s Rugby,… said the old guard, pulling his horn out of its case, and tootle-tooing away.

1892.  Pall Mall G., 16 Dec., 3/1. The drumming and the tootle-tooing, even the skirling of the Hallelujah maidens.