"Tad bit"

[Charles Doyle]

For several years I've been noticing, both in real life and on TV, locutions like "I'm going to add a tad bit more ginger." I don't believe OED or other dictionaries record that use of "tad"--or maybe the phrase is an idiom.  A Google search for "a tad bit" yielded 1,200,000 hits; for "a tad bit of" 102,000 hits; for "a tad bit more" 103,000 hits.

ADS-L, back in early 2002, had a brief exchange about the construction "It's a tid-bit nipply out there" (focusing principly on "nipply").  I wonder if "tid-bit" was somebody's mishearing of "tad bit"?

--Charlie

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