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plural ditties
: an especially simple and unaffected song
Examples of ditty in a Sentence
Play us a little ditty.
sung a little ditty in a minor key
Recent Examples on the Web
If Mike Myers hadn’t created Austin Powers — whose series of films employs this instrumental ditty as a theme — somebody would’ve had to have come up with a similar character just to take advantage of the song’s limitless swag.
—Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times, 4 Nov. 2024
Rita, being the daughter of a pub piano man, gets to sing live when the BBC arrives for a morale-boosting outside broadcast, and Ronan soulfully executes a sweet pastiche of 1940s ditties, composed by Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson.
—Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
And who knew that the cartoon series about the Harlem Globetrotters, the real-life, gravity-defying basketball heroes of the time, gave birth to an album of Globetrotters ditties, many co-written by Neil Sedaka?
—David Browne, Rolling Stone, 26 Sep. 2024
Anyone who grew up in the ’70s or ‘80s will remember this little ditty as their first introduction to the founding of the United States.
—Andrew Torgan, CNN, 15 Sep. 2024
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Word History
Etymology
Middle English ditee, from Anglo-French dité story, song, from past participle of diter to compose, from Latin dictare to dictate, compose
First Known Use
14th century, in the meaning defined above
Time Traveler
The first known use of ditty was
in the 14th century
Dictionary Entries Near ditty
Cite this Entry
“Ditty.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ditty. Accessed 29 Nov. 2024.
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