tilt

tilt¹ canopy, awning

Etymology

The awning is inherited from Middle English telte, also tilt, a variant of teld and tild,^[2][3][4][5] inherited from Old English teld (“tent, pavilion”),^[6][3][7][8] perhaps influenced by tent.^[2][7][4] The Old English word is from Proto-Germanic *teldą,^[9][10] cognate with Old Norse tjald (“tent; hangings”), Middle Dutch telt, Old High German zelt and German Zelt,^{[9][3][8][11]} and related to beteldan (“to cover”).^[12][8][5] Merriam-Webster connects it, perhaps, with Latin dolō (“to hew”),^[3] but Kroonen rejects a connection with Ancient Greek δέλτος (déltos, “writing tablet”).^[9] Weekley thought the modern form owed something to tillette, from Old French telele, a diminutive of the word for cloth.^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

A covering of coarse cloth, at first of haircloth; an awning, booth or tent: about 1440, in the Promptorium Parvulorum ("telte or tente").^[2][6] The Old English and early Middle English teld meant a tent or pavilion, as in Layamon.^[6][14]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth-Toller notes that the Old English word for a tent survived only in the tilt of a cart.^[6] The word came to name an awning over a boat (1611) and the canvas cover of a cart or wagon (1620),^[2][4] and Johnson (1755) gave both "a tent; any covering over head" and "the cover of a boat".^[15] In Labrador and Newfoundland a tilt was a fisherman's or woodcutter's hut or lean-to;^[2][3] the OED's first record is of 1612,^[2] while Hoad dates the sense to the 19th century.^[4] The English Dialect Dictionary records the cover of a wagon, van or stall in dialects from Scotland to the south of England.^[16] A verb, to cover with a tilt, is recorded from 1499.^[2][7]

Timeline

• Old English – teld, a tent or pavilion.^[6]
• c. 1440 – a covering of coarse cloth, an awning or tent.^[2]
• 1499 – verb, to cover with a tilt.^[2]
• 1611 – an awning over a boat.^[2]
• 1612 – in Labrador and Newfoundland, a hut or lean-to.^[2]
• 1620 – the canvas cover of a cart or wagon.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cloth cover or awning over a cart, wagon, boat or market stall.^[3][2][16]
2. (Newfoundland and Labrador) A log hut or lean-to.^[3][2]
3. (archaic) A tent or booth.^[15][2]

Verb

1. To cover with a tilt or awning.^[3][2]

tilt² lean; joust

Etymology

The verb meaning to lean is inherited from Middle English tilten (“to fall over; to push over”), also tulten,^{[17][3][18][12]} probably from an unrecorded inherited from Old English *tyltan,^{[2][12][18][4][8][19]} from tealt (“unsteady”),^[2][6][12] whence also tealtian (“to be unsteady”).^[2][8] It goes back to Proto-Germanic *taltaz,^{[12][18][10][19]} and is related to Old Norse tyllast (“to trip”), Swedish tulta (“to waddle, totter”), Norwegian tylta (“to walk on tiptoe”) and Middle Dutch touteren (“to tremble, swing”).^[12][8][3] Barnhart traces it further to Proto-Indo-European *del- (“to totter, waver”).^[18][10] The Shorter Oxford, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the American Heritage Dictionary allow instead a Scandinavian origin, comparing tylten (“unsteady”).^[7][20][21] The noun for a joust is from the verb in the sense "push over, overthrow",^[2][18][7] although Etymonline notes that the noun first seems to have meant the barrier between the riders, which suggests a link with tilt¹, an awning,^[12] and Hoad calls it of unknown origin.^[4] The jousting verb is from that noun.^[2][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

To fall over or topple, and to push over or overthrow: about 1390, in Joseph of Arimathie, where temples "tulten to þe eorþe".^[17][2] Barnhart dates tulten to about 1350.^[18]

Semantic evolution

The Middle English senses "fall" and "overthrow" died out in the 16th century.^[2][12] The modern sense, to cause to lean or slope, appears in 1594, perhaps from the idea of being likely to fall over,^[2][12][18] and the intransitive "lean, move into a slant" by the 1620s.^[12][2] A jousting knight tried to knock his opponent off his horse,^[22] and the noun tilt, a joust or the ground where jousts were held, is recorded from about 1507,^[2][18][3] with the verb "to joust" from 1595 and in a figurative sense from 1588 in Shakespeare.^[2][18] The image of the charging jousters gave the phrase full tilt, meaning at full speed, about 1600.^[2][12][22] The phrase tilt at windmills comes from the hero of Cervantes's novel, who attacked windmills that he took for giants; the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins dates it to the mid 17th century, Etymonline to 1798.^[22][12] The noun for a sloping position is recorded from 1560 in on the tilt,^[2][18] and in the plain sense from 1837.^[2][12] The 20th century added the camera movement (1915), the pinball machine's tilt device (1934, used figuratively from 1953)^[2][12] and, in American English, a bias or inclination, as in "a conservative tilt" (1975).^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1350 – tulten, to fall over (Barnhart's date).^[18]
• c. 1390 – to fall, topple; to push over (obsolete by 1577).^[2][17]
• c. 1507 – noun, a place for jousting; 1511, a joust.^[2][18][3]
• 1560 – on the tilt, in a tilted position.^[2]
• 1588 – to contend, figuratively, in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.^[18]
• 1594 – to cause to lean or slope.^[2][18][3]
• 1595 – to joust.^[2]
• c. 1600 – full tilt.^[2][12]
• 1837 – a sloping position.^[2][12]
• 1915 – to move a camera vertically.^[2]
• 1934 – the tilt of a pinball machine.^[12]
• 1975 – American English: a bias or tendency.^[18]

Meanings

Verb

1. To slope or incline, or to make something do so: He tilted his chair back against the wall.^[11][3][2]
2. To empty something by tipping it.^[3][2]
3. To joust, or to charge at an opponent; figuratively, to attack or contend with: to tilt at windmills.^{[11][3][2][22]}
4. To aim or thrust a lance.^[11][3]
5. To move a camera up or down.^[3][2]
6. To forge with a tilt hammer.^[11][3]
7. (obsolete, c. 1390–1577) To fall over, or to push over, overthrow.^[2][17]

Noun

1. A slope or angle; the act of tilting: The table stood at a slight tilt.^[11][2]
2. A joust; a thrust with a lance.^[11][3][2]
3. A dispute or encounter; an attempt to win a contest.^[3][11]
4. full tilt or at full tilt: at full speed or force.^[11][2][22]

Word family

• tilter
• tiltable
• untilt
• uptilt
• atilt
• tiltmeter
• full tilt