This group is about the history of games – board games, card games, gambling, children’s games, video games, role-playing games etc.
Teetotums and spinning dice
5 years, 4 months ago-
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Yes, the usual assumption is that the word “teetotum” or other early forms “tetotum” & “T totum” derive from the letter T shown on one of the spinning die’s faces being put in front of “totum”. The T would originally have been for “totum” (the whole). A quote by Strutt in 1801 demonstrates that letters on the dice/spinners represented English words by then. Dice marked with either T or P with a number (P1 = pay one, T2 = take two, etc.) are a younger development I think. Anyway, I don’t think we can be sure what people assumed the T to mean when the word “totum” was prefixed with it.
That would make it a rather pleonastic word. It also creates a distinct sound aesthetic; probably a good thing for a toy.
The oldest reference with the T-prefix, given by the OED, is this:
1720 Hist. Life & Adventures D. Campbell (1841) 50 A very fine ivory T totum, as children call it.
“teetotum, n.1.” OED Online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/198596.
Further 18th century references (not found in the OED):
- 1750 in “The Old Lady in Her Tantarums”, p. 10: …playing thus at T. Totum, Leap Frog, and Laugh and lye down…
- 1768 in various texts presumably all relating the same story, “The Trial of Frederick Calvert, Esq; Baron of Baltimore … for a Rape…”, p. 11; in the Tyburn Chronicle, p. 240; in “The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure”, p. 202; “The Scots Magazine” p. 202: …play at tetotum…
- 1770 in the notes to “Ancient Scottish Poems”, p. 301 and 316
It may be worth pointing out that in the 1830s advocates for total abstinence from intoxicating beverages coined words like “teetotal”, “teetotalism”, apparently to emphasize how very much totally abstinent from alcohol you should be. Late in the 19th century, “teetotum” could also mean a “teetotal” or temperance restaurant.
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