Why so prudish?

Discussion in 'Other Off-Topic Chat' started by Leo2, Dec 22, 2013.

  1. Leo2

    Leo2 Well-Known Member

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    Everywhere else in the English speaking world, the word for a tasty morsel, or a pleasing scrap of something, is a 'titbit', but in prudish North America (both Canada and the US) it becomes a 'tidbit'. Why? The word tit is not in any way obscene. Tits are a large family of small passerine birds which occur in the northern hemisphere and Africa, hence the derivation of a small, pleasing thing.
     
  2. Diuretic

    Diuretic Well-Known Member

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    Are they the little buggers that used to peck the metallic foil of the milk bottles outside your door and get the creamy bit?
     
  3. apoState

    apoState New Member

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    Heh, of all the examples of Americans being prudes I never thought about that one.
     
  4. smevins

    smevins New Member

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    I don't know that it is because of prudishness. When I was a kid, I often heard baby bottles referred to as titty bottles even though most folks turned the middle t's into d's, but I don't hear that one anymore. I think it is easier to pronounce with the d instead of a middle t. I hear people pronounce titty as if they were spelled tiddies even when talking about boobies.
     
  5. Leo2

    Leo2 Well-Known Member

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    I think you may be right, and I was probably jumping to conclusions. I have noticed that most North Americans pronounce the 't' when it appears in the middle of a word as a 'd' - as in water becoming warder, and writer becoming rider. Well, at least you do better than some examples of Estuary English, where the 't' is elided to the extent that writer becomes wry'er.:)
     
  6. smevins

    smevins New Member

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    Sure. The UK, particularly the Irish, aversion to pronouncing the letter H, especially when sitting beside a T used to drive me nutty.
     
  7. SFJEFF

    SFJEFF New Member

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    Looking up the origins I came across this article

    Americans do not say tidbit because they would titter at BrE titbit.
    Americans say tidbit because that's the original form of the word.


    It's a really easy one to blog about because I've said it before in the comments of another post, where another reader repeated the myth that tidbit arose from American prudishness. So I'll repeat myself here:
    The original form of ti{d/t}bit is generally held to be tidbit from tid or tyd (special, choice) plus bit and goes back to the 1600s.
    To give the OED etymology for it (just so you know I'm not making this up!):
    In 17th cent., tyd bit , tid-bit , < tid adj. + bit n.1; later also tit-bit , perhaps after compounds of tit n.3tid-bit is now chiefly N. Amer.
    (Except that we North Americans don't put a hyphen in it. As we've seen before, the British like hyphens in compounds--or former compounds, as this may be considered--a lot more than Americans do. In the Corpus of Contemporary American English there is just one tidbit with a hyphen, compared to 217 without. But still, the 20-year-old British National Corpus has 6 hyphenated tit-bits to 27 titbits, so this 1989 OED version is in need of a spelling update.)

    The 'perhaps after compounds of tit' part refers to things like titmouse or titlark. That particular tit refers to small things--so you can see how people might reanaly{s/z}e the word as meaning 'small morsel' rather than 'choice morsel' and change its pronunciation accordingly. Tid meaning 'tender, soft, nice' (as it was recorded in Johnson's Dictionary) was never all that common anyhow--it is assumed by later scholars that it was restricted to some dialect(s). It wasn't long after tid bit is first recorded in the OED (ca. 1642, but that isn't the first time it was used, of course) that the first instance of tit-bit shows up (1690), but it was a while before it took over completely in Britain. So, the more prevalent 17th-century form went to America, where it happily carried on, ignorant of the mutations happening in the family it left behind in England.

    http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/04/tidbits-and-titbits.html

    One of the worlds least important controversies.....
     
  8. Leo2

    Leo2 Well-Known Member

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    Noooo! How can you say such a thing? :D
     
  9. Pasithea

    Pasithea Banned at Members Request Past Donor

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    Makes me think of Eddie Izzards skit on how words are pronounced. Best part, "you say 'erbs and we say herbs because there's a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing 'h' in it." lol

    [video=youtube;Y6lJGD3Q9Qs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6lJGD3Q9Qs[/video]
     
  10. RedWolf

    RedWolf Well-Known Member

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    I don't know if it's so much prudishness as it is a cultural accent. The letter D rolls off easier then T does in this particular word. But it's like England leaving off the letter H at the beginning of certain words. It's just one of those differences that we have when we speak but I wouldn't consider it as being a prude.
     
  11. Hummingbird

    Hummingbird Well-Known Member

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    "Prudish"? Never tho't of 'tidbit' as being prudish... I grew up hearing the word 'tidbit'.... actually, who cares?

    And as far as the USA being 'prudish'..... really? Don't know where you get that crazy idea from.......
     
  12. liberalminority

    liberalminority Well-Known Member

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    America was founded by very moral Protestants who escaped religious persecution from England so that they didn't have to utter such vulgarity, that the royalty forced upon their pure and innocent tongues......

    Tidbit was a refined version used to not be confused with that more sinful usage of the T word.... and sounded holier, 'prudish' or not. No one thinks of birds when they hear that word, so it helps to prevent sinful thoughts of temptation.

    It's the little things like these that make us the world power a gift by God almighty, our world class moral compass that is apparently not shared by the rest of the 'English speaking world'.
     
  13. Leo2

    Leo2 Well-Known Member

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    LOL, I love irony, especially when administered so expertly. :D

    But, after reading of the etymology provided by SFJEFF, I have come to revise my opinion on the matter. I now realise that the original word was tydbit, which indicated a choice and tender (rather than small) morsel, and the American version of tidbit is closer to the original. This is one of the many advantages of these discussion boards - you can learn loads of things if you are prepared not to be right every time.:)
     
  14. Unifier

    Unifier New Member

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    ROFL! Tell me, do these titbirds have nipples on their faces instead of beaks? :roflol:
     
  15. Leo2

    Leo2 Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure why anyone might want to advertise his ornithological ignorance quite so readily. Presumably you have never heard of tits in any sense other than the vulgar? Allow me to inform you. :)

    [​IMG]
    European crested tit

    [​IMG]
    American tufted titmouse
     

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