![]() The OED says the term showed up as “tit bit” two years later: “A Man-servant … should goe into a Victualers service, because he hopeth for tit bits either of gift, or by stealth, and relicks more ordinary of his Masters Dishes.” From A Right Intention (1641), John Dawson’s translation of a Latin treatise by Jeremias Drexel. Maclean writes in his preface that Smyth finished the work on Dec. ![]() The work was later edited by John Maclean and published in 1885 as The Berkeley Manuscripts. ![]() (The “Hundred of Berkeley” refers to a section of the county.) a speciall morsell reserved to eat at last.” From A Description of the Hundred of Berkeley in the County of Gloucester and of Its Inhabitants, 1639, by the antiquarian John Smyth. The earliest OED citation is from a collection of proverbs and phrases spoken in Gloucestershire, a county in southwestern England: No matter how the first part was spelled, the terms originally meant “a small piece of tasty food a delicacy, a morsel,” according to the dictionary. However, Oxford notes what it apparently considers a less likely explanation-that “titbit” was “perhaps” influenced by “tit” and “tittle” (terms for various small things). The OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, says the “titbit” spelling in the UK “probably” resulted from the “alteration of the first element after the second”-that is, the British turned “tid” into “tit” to make it rhyme with “bit.” The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the term may have originated as a combination of the adjective “tid” (playful, frolicsome, lively, etc.) and the noun “bit” (biting or a bite), though it says “the form tidbit is now chiefly North American.” Clearly this casts "tad" as a different part of speech (adjective rather than noun), which to my mind strongly suggests we're dealing with a neologistic usage rather than something "continuous" from the original sense.Q: Why do Americans use “tidbit” for a word that we in the UK properly spell “titbit”?Ī: Americans may spell it “tidbit” because that’s how the term was pronounced when it first appeared in English in the 17th century as “tyd bit.” I'll also point out that the rise of "a tad bit" mirrors the decline of "a tidy bit". It's often used where a speaker wants to distract attention from the substance of what's being said by using slightly "quirky" wording - no-one knows exactly how much a tad is, so it could be anything from "a detectable (but non-problematic) amount" to "far too much". To my ear, the current usage is an affectation - akin to a mite, or a smidgen/smidgeon/smidgin. 150 years ago it was just a folksy/slang term for a small child (probably from tadpole), but I've never heard it thus used in my lifetime. ![]() At the time I assumed perhaps one freelance writer who contributed to several titles just happened to like the expression.īy the 90s it was commonplace in most mass-market magazines, and for the last decade and more I've become accustomed to hearing it in speech too. I recall being exceptionally irritated back in the 80s when "a tad" suddenly became ubiquitous in the rapidly-growing context of personal computing magazines.įor several years, I never saw it anywhere else, but I used to subscribe to several such magazines, and they all used it. I guess ‘a tad’ means ‘a bit’ or ‘a little’ or ‘slightly.’ However, what is good for using ‘a tad’ instead of using ‘a bit’ or ‘a little’ or ‘slightly’? Are there great differences between these three words? Is there any ‘added value’ in using ‘a tad’, in place of familiar ‘a bit’ and ‘a little’ and ‘slightly’? "You're a liberal, so you're probably scared of guns,'' I was told by an. I looked for another example of the use of “a tad” through Google and found the following sentence in “March comes in like a lion, as they say, and goes out like a lamb, and here in the middle of the month I'm feeling a little lamblike and ‘a tad’ lion-ish. (Aside: My initial interest was the adage of “March is not going out quite as lamblike,” which I could easily make out.) “March is not going out quite as lamblike as the adage would have it, which makes the prospect of opening day in New York just a tad less idyllic than one might hope.” The article starts with the following line: I came across the word “a tad” which is unfamiliar to me in today’s New York Times’ article, titled “Yankees Bracing for Cold in Opener and in April.”
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