Tote

Page 2 of 2 | Previous page

  1. Daniel M Schultz:

    Why wasn’t Tute included as a possible source? f (genitive Tüte, plural Tüten, diminutive Tütchen n)

    a small to medium-sized bag, usually of paper or plastic (sometimes also of fabric, for which more properly Beutel)

  2. nomen nescio:

    Daniel, the timeline is wrong. Tote appears in the American plantation states as a verb. It was a verb in Bantu languages with an almost identical meaning. Only much later was it made a noun. If it came to English from contemporary German the vowel would not go from ue to o. Also, the Tuette is a cone of paper for holding things in the hand, not a big canvas bag to carry, that is, tote, things around.

    There’s no evidence of an origin before New World slavery and even if there was the T sound isn’t conserved in English. It becomes a d. Tanzen dance. Tier deer. Thus the word you are looking for is dutt or deet (nuessen is nuts but in Yiddish it’s niisse). I don’t know any such word. That’s because we call that shape a cone.