ditto

Used as an expression of agreement with what another person has said, or to indicate that what they have said equally applies to the person being addressed.

Adverb

  1. As said before, likewise.
    • The inflationary effect of injecting $1 billion into the economy could be dire; ditto the impact on the tumbling bolivar of treating foreign reserves as if they were the government's piggy-bank. - 2004 January 15,...
    • Some of the players were concerned about what the future held for them – given that one of the measures involved Chelsea not being able to operate in the transfer market or offer new contracts. Ditto many members of...

Origin

First attested in 1625. From regional Italian ditto, variant of detto, past participle of dire (“to say”), from Latin dīcō (“to say, to speak”). Not related to English dittography. The specific meaning of making copies of paper comes from ditto machine, a genericization from the brand name of a spirit duplicator.

Interjection

  1. Used as an expression of agreement with what another person has said, or to indicate that what they have said equally applies to the person being addressed.
    • I'm really busy today! —Ditto!
    • "Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?" "Ditto," said Tweedledum. "Ditto, ditto!" cried Tweedledee. - 1871 December 27 (indicated as 1872), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym;...

Noun

  1. That which was stated before, the aforesaid, the above, the same, likewise.
    • [...] they entered a dismal-looking parlour, whose brick-red walls and ditto curtains were scantily lighted by a single lamp, though it was of the last new patent—[…] - 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV,...
    • […]a spacious table in the centre, and a variety of smaller dittos in the corners:[…] - 1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “Comprising a Brief Description of the Company at the Peacock Assembled; and a Tale...
    • Well say he's got the constitution of a dinosaur, recuperative powers ditto. And as we both know, I'm a bright young medic with a miraculous touch. Well why then, when I returned, there wasn't a trace of that wound on...
  2. The ditto mark, 〃; a symbol, represented by two apostrophes, inverted commas, or quotation marks (" "), indicating that the item preceding is to be repeated.

    Synonyms: ditto mark ditto sign do. do

  3. A suit of clothes of the same color throughout.
  4. A copy made by (run off by) a ditto machine (especially, a worksheet thus reproduced).
    • Please run off twenty-four dittos of this assignment for my students.
    • Mr. Zappadia gave each student a ditto of a black-and-white cow. - 2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Jonathan Cape, page 227:

    Hypernyms: dupe copy

    Coordinate Terms: mimeo mimeograph hectograph photostat photocopy xerox xerograph

  5. A copy; an imitation.
    • "You've got to look good to feel good," she announces, a ditto of television slogans. - 1991, N. Romano-Benner with S. Murphy, “Convoking the muses of Cuenca”, in Americas, volume 43, number 1, page 6:
    • Last year, Argenta-Oreana blanked the Chiefs 23-0 in a second-round game Dee-Mack coach Jim McDonald said was "pretty much a ditto" of what transpired Saturday. - 2003 November 9, “Argenta appears unfazed”, in Herald &...
    • The intent of the policy, she said, is "not to put everybody in a ditto environment," where all are expected to look and act exactly like all others. - 2009 May 6, “Brunswick school hopes to be model for uniforms”, in...

Forms

dittos dittoes

Derived

dittohead dittoism dittology ditto master dittoship ditto suit ditto worksheet suit of dittoes

Verb

  1. To repeat the aforesaid, the earlier action etc.
    • The Communists believed that Prakasam, the Prime Minister, never tried to check the bureaucracy but dittoed every action of the corrupt officials and police. - 1989, K. K. N. Kurup, Agrarian struggles in Kerala:

    Synonyms: ape echo

  2. To make a copy using a ditto machine.
    • But they were all purple, Dittoed—worn, torn, stained with coffee. - 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 3, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 55:
    • I was going to join a commune of my friends. I sort of issued a declaration of independence which I dittoed up and put in everybody's mail box in the department. - 1976 April 26, Jil Clark, Julia Penelope, Susan Wolfe,...

    Hypernyms: copy reproduce

    Coordinate Terms: mimeo mimeograph photostat photocopy xerox xerograph

Forms

dittos dittoing dittoed