Other forms: touted, touting, touts
To tout is to try noisily to sell or promote something. Tout for business, touted as the next big thing, ticket touts.
The selling sense is disapproving and implies pushiness. A tout in British English is somebody reselling tickets above face value outside a venue, which is illegal for some events. Widely touted means much promoted in advance, usually with the suggestion that the promotion is louder than the thing. Note tout for, meaning to seek business; and that the word once meant to peer or look out.
1verbtoutTo try noisily to sell or promote something.
“The company touted its new phone as the fastest ever made.”
2nounresellingSomebody reselling tickets above face value.
“Touts outside the stadium were selling tickets for five times their price.”
tout is a promoting or a reseller.
Middle English touten meant to stick out or peer, from Old English tutian. A tout was originally a lookout, and the sense of soliciting business grew from watching for customers.
Proto-Germanic
*tut(t)- — to stick out, project
Old English
*tūtian — to be sticking out, protrude
Middle English
touten — to jut out, protrude, gaze upon, observe, peer
English, today
tout
From Middle English touten (“to jut out, protrude, gaze upon, observe, peer”), from Old English tūtian (“to be sticking out, protrude”), related to Old English tȳtan (“to stand out, be conspicuous, shine”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic tut(t)- (“to stick out, project”). Compare Icelandic túta (“a teat-like prominence”), tútna (“to be blown up”). Possibly influenced by dialectal toot (“to stick out; project; peer out; peep”), from Middle English toten, totien, from Old English tōtian (“to peep out; look; pry; spectate”). Compare also Old English tot, ġetot (“pomp, splendour, vainglory”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire