tutu

Etymology

It is borrowed from French tutu,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} which the dictionaries explain as a nursery alteration of cucu, a childish word for the bottom formed from cul (“buttocks, backside”).^{[2][3][4][7][8]} Barnhart and Etymonline call cucu an infantile reduplication of cul,^[3][4] the OED and the Shorter Oxford a diminutive of it,^[2][6] and the American Heritage Dictionary gives the whole account only as "perhaps".^[9] Merriam-Webster Unabridged records both cucu and tutu as baby-talk words for the backside.^[5] The French cul is from Latin cūlus (“bottom, backside”),^[4][7] which Etymonline traces to Proto-Indo-European *kuh-lo- (“backside, rear”), the source also of Old Irish cúl (“back”) and Welsh cil (“corner, angle”), while noting after de Vaan that its ultimate origin is obscure.^[4] The same French word is the source of culottes and cul-de-sac.^[3][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A ballet dancer's skirt of layered stiff frills: 1910, in E. F. Spence's Our Stage.^[2][3][4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1913 as its first known use,^[5] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1925–30.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Word Origins notes that the outfit first called a tutu in English was the short classical one, whose skirt stands out horizontally from the waist.^[11] The OED and the Shorter Oxford also include the longer kind reaching halfway between the knee and the ankle, distinguished as the romantic tutu from the very short classic tutu.^[2][6] Cassell's book of word origins compares the French nursery word to English baby talk for the bottom.^[12] Collins records the adjective tutued, wearing a tutu.^[7]

Timeline

• 1910 – a ballet skirt made of layers of stiffened frills.^[2][3][4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to 1913.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A short skirt worn by a ballerina, made of many layers of stiffened sheer fabric that stand out from the waist.^[7][9][5]
2. Either of the two main kinds of this costume: the very short classic tutu, standing out from the legs, or the romantic tutu, reaching halfway between the knee and the ankle.^[2][6]

Related words

• culottes
• cul-de-sac
• culet

Usage notes

Two other words are spelled tutu.^[2][5] One, borrowed from Māori tutu, names New Zealand shrubs of the genus Coriaria with black berries and poisonous seeds; it is recorded from 1845,^[2][6][5][7] and New Zealand slang had to eat one's tutu, to become used to colonial life, from 1857.^[2] The other, from Hawaiian tūtū, is a Hawaiian word for a grandparent.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Cassell's Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, London: Cassell