Probably onomatopoeic in origin. Compare Dutch toeteren (“to blow a horn”), German tuten, Swedish tuta, Danish tude.
Noun etymology 1, noun sense 7 ("Mastodon post") and verb etymology 1, verb sense 10 ("to post on Mastodon") are influenced by tweet (“Twitter post”).
Meanings
(countable) The noise of a horn or whistle.
He gave a little toot of the horn, to get their attention.
(broadly, countable, informal) A fart; flatus.
(slang, uncountable) Cocaine.
(countable, slang) A portion of cocaine that a person snorts.
So he took a toot. A couple of days later he did another, then another. Soon Harry was using more coke than he had done in his whole life. 1981, New York Magazine, volume 14, number 35, page 30:
(countable, informal, uncountable) A spree of drunkenness.
Most of the people we observed [in the casino] were elderly, retired folk; many of them, we conjectured, were widows on a toot the like of which they'd never experienced in their whole lives. 1980 February 16, Nancy Walker, “You Can Go Home Again”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 29, page 12:
(informal, uncountable) Rubbish; tat.
I'm not paying fifty pounds for this load of old toot!
(countable, qualifier:social media) A message on the social networking software Mastodon.
So if I follow Nick, his toots (yep, they're called toots) will show up in wandering.shop's federated timeline. 2018 August 24, Beth Skwarecki, “A Beginner's Guide to Mastodon”, in Lifehacker:
As for layout, Mastodon feels a little like TweetDeck, with columns for your toots, toots from the people you follow, your mentions, and (unlike Twitter) a timeline of all public posts being shared by every user on the platform. 2017 April 4, Madison Malone Kircher, “What the Heck Is Mastodon, and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?”, in New York Magazine:
Mastodon users can send toots with 500 characters as opposed to Twitter's 140. But that's not the only difference. Individual toots can be marked as private, meaning you don't have to choose between a public or a private account like on Twitter. 2017 April 5, Jack Morse, “Bye, Twitter. All the cool kids are migrating to Mastodon”, in Mashable Australia:
Interestingly, Mastodon offers a bit more in that aspect for toots can be 500 characters long. 2017 April 5, “Mastodon is here; will you stop tweeting and start tooting?”, in The Indian Express:
Forms
Spelling
Features
Labels
Source
toots
Number=Plur
lexicographic
Deriveds
tinker's toot (Terms derived from toot (noun)) · subtoot (Terms derived from toot (noun)) · on a toot (Terms derived from toot (noun))
pt toot (Mastodon post) · hu sípolás (noise of a horn or whistle) · bg звуков сигнал (noise of a horn or whistle) · hu trombitaszó (noise of a horn or whistle) · de Tröt (Mastodon post) · fr pouët (noise of a horn or whistle) · hu kürtszó (noise of a horn or whistle) · hu dudaszó (noise of a horn or whistle) · hu sípszó (noise of a horn or whistle) · de Toot (Mastodon post) · ru свист (noise of a horn or whistle) · ru гудо́к (noise of a horn or whistle) · pt apito (noise of a horn or whistle) · it fischio (noise of a horn or whistle) · nl getoeter (noise of a horn or whistle) · ca siulat (noise of a horn or whistle) · es silbato (noise of a horn or whistle) · fi tuuttaus (noise of a horn or whistle) · sv tut (noise of a horn or whistle) · vi huýt (noise of a horn or whistle) · cmn 嘟文 (Mastodon post) · hu trombitálás (noise of a horn or whistle) · hu dudálás (noise of a horn or whistle) · mi piopi (noise of a horn or whistle) · vi tiếng còi (noise of a horn or whistle) · fr pouet (noise of a horn or whistle) · ca xiulet (noise of a horn or whistle) · hu kürtölés (noise of a horn or whistle)
Probably onomatopoeic in origin. Compare Dutch toeteren (“to blow a horn”), German tuten, Swedish tuta, Danish tude.
Noun etymology 1, noun sense 7 ("Mastodon post") and verb etymology 1, verb sense 10 ("to post on Mastodon") are influenced by tweet (“Twitter post”).
Meanings
To stand out, or be prominent.
Now rise up, Master Huddypeke, Your tail toteth out behind. 1519, John Rastell, Four Elements:
To peep; to look narrowly.
In the court, in the noblemen's houses, at every merchant's house, those Observants were spying, tooting, and looking, watching and prying, what they might hear or see against the see of Rome. 1550 November 9, Hugh Latimer, A Sermon preached at Stamford:
Long wandering up and downe the land, With bowe and bolts in either hand, For birds in bushes tooting. 1579, Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender:
To see; to spy.
To produce the noise of a horn or whistle.
A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 205:
The island rang, as yet, with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches. 1855, William Makepeace Thackeray, The Newcomes:
To cause a horn or whistle to produce a noise.
"In the morning, we get deer on the line. We tend not to 'toot' them because it seems that only makes them more likely to run across the track." 2025 August 20, Paul Clifton, “A driver's eye view of East West Rail”, in RAIL, number 1042, page 33:
(slang) To flatulate.
(intransitive) Of a queen bee, to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.
(slang) To go on a drinking binge.
(slang) To snort (a recreational drug).
I had graduated from the simple tooting cocaine up my nose to smoking it, which was a completely different experience and animal. 2008, Robert L. Glover, Street Corner Symphony: An American Story, page 65:
(qualifier:social media) To post a message on a Mastodon instance.
Only want to toot in the Animal Rights instance? You can create an account there and do that. 2017 April 5, Jack Morse, “Bye, Twitter. All the cool kids are migrating to Mastodon”, in Mashable Australia:
Each instance has its own administrator and its own code of conduct, so make sure you read up before you toot. 2018 August 24, Beth Skwarecki, “A Beginner's Guide to Mastodon”, in Lifehacker:
One alternative to Fist is Mastodon, which looks and behaves a bit like Twitter (you don’t tweet, you “toot”). 2018 February 8, Marie Boran, “Why tweet when you can toot on Mastodon”, in The Irish Times:
hu dudál (to make the sound of a horn) · es tocar (to cause a horn or whistle to produce a noise) · hu sípol (to make the sound of a horn) · pt tootar (to post to Mastodon) · cs zahoukat (to make the sound of a horn) · cs troubit (to make the sound of a horn) · de tröten (to post to Mastodon) · hu trombitál (to make the sound of a horn) · pt buzinar (to make the sound of a horn) · es [hacer] sonar (to cause a horn or whistle to produce a noise) · cs houkat (to make the sound of a horn) · cs zatroubit (to make the sound of a horn) · es tañer (to cause a horn or whistle to produce a noise) · bg давам звуков сигнал (to make the sound of a horn) · de tröten (to make the sound of a horn) · hu kürtöl (to make the sound of a horn) · sv tuta (to make the sound of a horn) · mi piopi (to make the sound of a horn)