totty

See also: Totty

English

Etymology 1

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /tɒti/
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Rhymes: -ɒti

Noun

totty (uncountable)

(UK, Ireland, slang) sexually attractive women considered collectively; usually connoting a connection with the upper class.
(UK, Ireland, slang) an individual sexually attractive woman
- 2005, Georgina Hunter-Jones, Peckham Diamonds, Fly Fizzi Publishing, →ISBN, page 19:
  The mother screamed that Ali was a posh totty who held her nose up at ordinary folk with babies.
- 2006, Richard Taylor, Eddie Shore 4 Jo, Lulu Press, Inc., →ISBN, page 29:
  Some posh totty, who was more than a little bit of a babe, just walks up and makes Eddie pull her, against his will almost.
- 2006, Tonto Greenberg, J Bannister, The Blue Book : V. 1, Banland Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 32:
  The doctor attended a fancy dress ball dressed as Star Trek's Dr Spock but suddenly the costume split open and his phaser found its way into some totty.

Usage notes

Although denoting a countable subject, the noun is most often a mass noun. A single person is described as "some totty" or "a bit of totty". But a group of people can also be referred to as "some totty" or "the totty".

Synonyms

talent

Related terms

hotty

Etymology 2

Compare totter.

Adjective

totty (comparative more totty, superlative most totty)

(UK, obsolete, dialect) unsteady; dizzy; tottery
- c. 1600, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book VII (Two Cantos of Mutabilitie), Canto VII:
  Then came October full of merry glee: / For yet his noule [head] was totty of the must, / Which he was treading in the wine-fats see, […]
- 1820, Walter Scott, chapter 32, in Ivanhoe:
  I tell thee, fellow, I was somewhat totty when I received the good knight's blow, or I had kept my ground under it.
- 1820, Walter Scott, chapter 42, in Ivanhoe:
  I ate, drank, and was invigorated; when, to add to my good luck, the Sacristan, too totty to discharge his duty of turnkey fitly, locked the door beside the staple, so that it fell ajar.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “totty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Etymology 3

From tot (“small child”).

Alternative forms

Adjective

totty

(now chiefly Scotland) Tiny, wee.
- 1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, Vintage, published 2015, page 6:
  She would meet me with a summerbag: shoes and the little black number, though it had a totey hole at the shoulder […].