Talk:Dottle

"Dottle" is neither a neologism nor a simple definition entry
Dottle is a term that's at least 90 years old, as it is referenced in the Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb. The word is peculiar to pipe smoking, and much discussion is made on how to avoid excessivly large dottles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frotz (talk • contribs) 11:01, 8 September 2006‎
 * - I am afraid the word is not peculiar to smoking, although this today seems to be the most common usage at least outside of the UK. The earliest reference to dottle I have found so far is, dottle= a type of shell-fish, in 1748 from the Royal Society in GB. 1825 is the earliest reference to tobacco-plug (Oxford English Dictionary online seems to be correct, but somewhat short on this topic). The etymology in the article is not quite correct though, since OED says:
 * Quote: « Etymology: apparently diminutive of DOT n.1: compare DIT v.
 * †1. A plug; = DOSSIL n. 1. Obs.
 * 2. The plug of tobacco ash remaining in the bottom of a pipe after smoking. (orig. Sc.) »
 * - Dot comes from Old English dott, which still exists in Norwegian and apparently comes from the Indo-german root *dhudh which is related to the greek word - θ υ´ σ α ν ο ζ - derived from θ υ τ ρ ( th y t r(h) ) which is connected to old sanskrit dudhita- . Even more fun: dit is derived from dot.
 * - Dossil on the other hand is derived from french (and latin) and has the same meaning as dottle, but does not seem to have the same etymology. It seems to be connected to dosis, and German dose, Norwegian dose and dåse.
 * - I have found a lot of references to dottle/dottel. This is a well known word in Scotland and also a Geordie word. The Scottish and Geordie meanings tally well with the Norwegian meanings of dott. As the article now stands it does not correspond well with a plethora of Scottish, English and other dictionaries and references. The etymology needs to be changed.
 * - I am however having a lot of fun tracing the word through both serious litterature like Kipling, Lawrence Durell, Judy Garland, J.M. Barrie and Alice in Wonderland and more recent references on the net. I have ended up with a multitude of references and will be able to both correct the etymology and put in as many inline references as desirable. I found the word translated into several languages including Norwegian where it was called a lensmann, a sadly obsolete usage of the word. I own several pipes, but no pipe manual and although the net was helpful, several very good pipesources were not available digitally. It will take a bit of time to sort the references I have found and maybe ask a library for some books on paper. But it seems probabel that I will have to change the article somewhat to cover all the references I found. This is provided everybody is happy with some changes. Best regards.  -- Engelhart talk contr 20:07, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, provided you can find reliable third-party references to add to the article. Also, you might want to see if you can get a photograph or perhaps an old illustration (i.e., one in the public domain) of dottle from one of the books you look up. — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:44, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Changed the preamble and etymology in accordance with the OED. I have not found any basis for the theory that the dottle must be wet, dry dottle is still dottle. Originally the dottle was the plug or twist of tobacco put into a pipe and then smoked, it seems possible the word has changed meaning over the years and at least outside Scotland used for the remains only. The wet dottle passages are marked with (needs citation). I have found a lot of discussions about wet dottle, but they were not really reliable sources, just advertising, blogs or discussion threads. The article is now a user manual on how to avoid for the dottle to become wet and I rather think this should change somewhat. I am now waiting for my local library to provide me with a proper pipe smoking manual on paper, the net did not provide very good articles and Google Books did give a lot of excerpts but few complete books. Then there is the spelling dottel and the village [Dottel] and some other meanings of the word. I am thinking about the Scottish connection of the word, but does not have much time available at present and am a bit uncertain of how much dictionary this article should contain. This is after all an encyclopaedia and some of what I found might be a bit too small for a Wikipedia article. -- Best regards from Engelhart  talk contr 19:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Pipe Cleaners subsection
Is the pipe cleaners section relevant to this article? It seems like it should instead be replaced by a link to the pipe cleaners article at most. WikidKev (talk) 20:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * The pipe cleaners section doesn't even need to be here. Pipe tools are used for clearing dottles, not pipe cleaners. -- Frotz(talk) 07:25, 7 April 2024 (UTC)