Nitnoid

[Michael Quinion]

This week's World Wide Words newsletter contains a short item on the
American slang term "nitnoid", for some matter that is unimportant
but annoying, or a person who takes a pedantic nit-picking attitude
to life. In the absence of firm data, I speculated that it came from
"nit-picking", but several subscribers have suggested it is from the
Thai phrase "nit noi", for a very small amount of something, brought
back to the US by servicemen after the Vietnam war. Can anybody point
to evidence that confirms or refutes this?

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Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>