Etymologically
Log in

tit

History Permalink

Etymology and origin of the English word tit

Ayto counts three separate English words spelled tit: the breast, the bird, and the light tap of tit for tat.[1] The two main ones have their own blocks below.[1][2]

Pronunciation

tit1 breast, teat

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
c. 950 Lindisfarne Gospels
Inherited from
Old English titt via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Proto-Germanic *tittaz

Etymology

The breast or teat is inherited from Middle English titte, also tit,[4][5] inherited from Old English titt, also tit and tite,[4][6][7] from Proto-Germanic *tittaz.[8] Its cognates are Middle Dutch tette, Dutch tit, Middle Low German titte, Middle High German zitze, German Zitze and Norwegian dialect titta;[2][6][9][10] the OED takes the word to have been a nursery word, perhaps imitating the sound of sucking,[2][1] and Holthausen and Orel call it a nursery or descriptive word.[10][9] From Germanic the word passed into the Romance languages, giving Italian tetta, Spanish teta and French tette, and the Old French form gave English teat.[1] Etymonline calls tit a variant of teat, and Barnhart refers to that word.[11][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A teat or nipple: Old English, in the Lindisfarne Gospels (about 950), at Luke 11:27;[2][7] the Durham Ritual already has the plural for a woman's breasts.[2]

Semantic evolution

As the borrowed word teat took over as the polite term, tit became regional and, in the sense "breast", vulgar.[1][2] The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins says that the sense "a woman's breast" was in Old English, died out in the Middle Ages, and reappeared in the USA in the mid 19th century;[12] Barnhart dates the vulgar sense to 1928, in American English,[7] and Green's Dictionary of Slang has a pun on it from 1850.[13] Etymonline suggests that the modern slang plural tits was a new coinage from teat or the nursery word titties, made without awareness of the old word.[11] In the dialects of Scotland and much of England tit still meant a teat or nipple in the 19th century.[14] Figurative and technical senses followed: a small knob or push-button (1864), a stub of metal left by a cutting tool (1884), and, in American slang from 1919, a source of support or supply.[2] Slang phrases include to get on someone's tits (1945), tits and ass (1965) and to go tits up (1977).[2]

Timeline

  • c. 950 – a teat, a nipple, in the Lindisfarne Gospels.[7][2]
  • Old English – plural, a woman's breasts, in the Durham Ritual.[2]
  • 1864 – slang, a small knob; later a push-button.[2]
  • 1919 – American slang, a source of support or supply.[2]
  • 1928 – vulgar slang, a woman's breast, in American English.[7][11]
  • 1945 – to get on someone's tits, to irritate.[2]
  • 1965 – tits and ass.[2]
  • 1977 – tits up, broken or ruined.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (vulgar slang) A woman's breast; usually in the plural.[4][2][15]
  2. A teat or nipple.[4][2][15]
  3. (slang) A small knob or push-button.[2][4]
  4. to get on someone's tits (British slang): to annoy someone intensely.[2]
  5. to go tits up (slang): to break down or fail completely.[2]

Word family

  • titty
  • tittie
  • hind tit
  • tits and ass

tit2 small bird; small horse

Confidence
Uncertain
First attested
1548 W. Patten, Expedicion into Scotlande

Etymology

The small bird and the small horse are an expressive word for a small animal or object, according to the OED,[2] and Klein takes it to have been originally a child's word for anything small.[5] It first appears much earlier inside compounds: titmouse (14th century) and titling, a small kind of dried fish (14th century).[6][16] The Shorter Oxford, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins think it probably of Scandinavian origin, comparing Old Norse titlingr (“sparrow”) and Icelandic titlingur (“sparrow”);[16][17][12] Etymonline and Weekley add tittr and Norwegian tita (“a little bird”),[11][18] but Etymonline finds the connection obscure.[11] As the name of the bird it is short for titmouse, according to Barnhart, Klein, Ayto and Merriam-Webster.[7][5][1][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small horse, or one not fully grown: 1548, in W. Patten's account of the expedition into Scotland;[2] Green's Dictionary of Slang dates the same passage 1544,[13] and Etymonline gives the 1540s.[11]

Semantic evolution

The word was applied to small creatures of several kinds:[2][11] a tit was a small or poor horse, later any horse or nag;[2][11] Johnson (1755) gives "a small horse: generally in contempt", quoting Tusser.[19] From 1599 it was also a girl or young woman, often a disreputable one,[2][11] and between 1601 and the 19th century a lad.[2] The American Heritage Dictionary notes that northern European languages use similar words for small things, animals and people, especially girls, such as Norwegian dialect titta, a little girl.[15] The bird sense is recorded by the OED from 1648, in the Earl of Westmorland's Otia Sacra,[2] while Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date it to 1706, in Kersey's edition of Phillips' dictionary.[7][4] With a qualifying word it named other small birds from 1668, and in Australia and New Zealand it has named, since 1870, small birds unrelated to the true tits.[2] The OED notes that in British English tit is now more usual than titmouse.[2] In Yorkshire the wren was a tit;[14] as the name of a horse it was still in dialect and slang use across England in the 19th century.[14]

Timeline

  • 1548 – a small horse, a nag.[2][13]
  • 1594 – figurative, a willing tit (obsolete by 1770).[2]
  • 1599 – a girl or young woman.[2][11]
  • 1601 – a boy, a lad (obsolete by 1888).[2]
  • 1648 – a small songbird of the family Paridae.[2]
  • 1668 – with a qualifying word, other small songbirds.[2]
  • 1706 – short for titmouse, in Kersey's edition of Phillips.[7][4]
  • 1870 – in Australia and New Zealand, small tit-like birds.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Any of various small, active songbirds of the family Paridae, such as the blue tit and great tit; a titmouse.[20][4][2]
  2. Any of various similar small birds, usually with a qualifying word, as the long-tailed tit.[20][2][15]
  3. (archaic or dialect) A small or worn-out horse; a nag.[20][4][2]
  4. (archaic) A girl or young woman, often a disreputable one.[4][2]

Word family

  • titmouse
  • titlark
  • tomtit
  • bushtit
  • teat
  • tit for tat
  • titbit
  • titillate
  • twit
  • chit

Usage notes

Several smaller words have the same spelling.[2][1] The tit of tit for tat, a light blow or tap, is recorded from 1546 and is imitative;[2][16][1] tit for tat itself varies an earlier tip for tap.[16][18] A Scottish and northern verb tit, to pull or tug, and the noun tit, a tug, go back to Middle English and are of unknown origin.[2][16][21] Tit for a fool, recorded from 1881, is of uncertain origin: the OED and the Shorter Oxford think it may come from the breast word, comparing twit,[2][16] and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins allows either.[12] The tit- of titbit is probably a different word again, originally tid-, as in American tidbit.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  8. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
  9. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  10. ^ a b Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  12. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  14. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  15. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  16. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  17. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  18. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  19. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  20. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  21. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Tit.” Etymologically, 31 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/en/tit. Accessed 31 Oct. 2026.

Last edited on . ·