Also 8–9 totle. Chiefly dial. [In sense 1 app. onomatopœic, representing the motion and sound involved. In senses 2 and 3 perh. by-form of TODDLE or TOTTER, and TOPPLE.]
1. intr. To move and bubble, as a boiling liquid; also said of the vessel; and applied to the somewhat similar motion and sound of a rivulet over a stony bed. Sc. Hence Tottling vbl. sb.
1717. Lament for Ld. Maxwell, in Jacob. Songs & Ball. (1887), 103. ’Side the sang o’ the birds, where some burn tottles owre.
1739. A. Nicol, Nat. without Art, 100. In Winter-time a Piece fat Beef to tottle.
1835. Monteath, Dunblane (1887), 32. The woman … cast a longing eye at the kail-pot ‘tottling on the fire.’
1864. A. Leighton, Myst. Leg. Edinb. (1886), 68. They heard the sound of … the sweltering and tottling of the pot.
b. trans. To cause to simmer or boil. Sc.
a. 1774. Fergusson, To Principal, etc., St. Andrews, 40. Imprimis, then, a haggis fat, Weel tottl’d in a seything pat.
1776. Herd, Collect. Scot. Songs, II. 182. Ye’s get a cock well totled i’ the pat, An ye’ll come hame, an ye’ll come hame.
2. intr. To move unsteadily and with short tottering steps; to toddle.
1821. Galt, Sir A. Wylie, III. xxxiii. 287. Their bairns … when they begin to tottle about the house. Ibid. (1824), Rothelan, VI. iii. The tidy grand-dame … is seen with a pitcher slowly tottling across the fields to the dairy.
1873. Hale, In His Name, i. The twin babies who could hardly tottle along the road.
3. intr. = TOPPLE v. 1. dial.
1830. Hogg, in Blackw. Mag., XXVIII. 895. Off flew the English warder’s head, And tottled into Foxton burn.
a. 1905. in Eng. Dial. Dict., s.v., (N. Yorks.) Toad fella nearly tottled of t’ steul ’at he was set on wi’ laughing.
Hence Tottledom, nonce-wd. (for toddledom), the sphere of toddlers or toddling; babyhood, infancy: Tottlish a., unsteady, totterish.
1889. Anthony’s Photogr. Bull., II. 354. There not being the least fear of its … ever exceeding the limits of cameraic *tottledom.
1853. Mrs. Moodie, Life in Clearings, 16. This was the first time he had ever ventured upon the water in such a *tottleish machine [as a birch-bark canoe].
1889. C. F. Woolson, Jupiter Lights, xxviii. She’ll soon fill it full of tottlish little tables and dimity.
