tidbit versus titbit?

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:24 AM -0400 10/23/07, Rachel Sommer wrote:
>David Mar, an Australian, writes in the annotation to his Irregular Webcomic
>(http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1731.html):
>
>The etymology of the word "titbit" is interesting. As best I can ascertain
>>  without access to a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, the original form
>>  was "tidbit", from the Middle English *tyd*, meaning choice or special,
>>  and *bit*, meaning a small morsel. At some point the British converted
>>  this to "titbit" for some reason I haven't been able to uncover

to achieve the rhymed syllables, I assume, or
"assimilation at a distance", which amounts here
to the same result

LH

>, and this
>>  spelling and pronunciation is now the most common in the UK and Commonwealth
>>  nations. The "tidbit" spelling remains as an alternative in use in the USA,
>>  although it seems to have been a relatively recent re-invention, appearing
>>  in the US only as recently as the mid-19th century. It's not that the US has
>>  *preserved* the original spelling, but that they have for some reason *gone
>>  back to it* after an intervening couple of centuries when everyone used
>>  "titbit".
>>
>>  There is some speculation that the (relatively) recent American change was
>>  prompted by a prudish desire to sanitise the language of "rude syllables",
>>  changing the potentially titillating (pun intended) "tit" for "tid".
>>  However, there doesn't appear to be any solid evidence for this as the
>>  reason.
>>
>
>Anyone know why we USAians are different?
>
>--
>--
>Rachel Sommer
>As the Italian proverb says:
>L'aritmetica non è opinione (arithmetic is not an opinion).
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org