"Tad bit"

[Wilson Gray]

And there's "tee-nine-shih," common among both black speakers and
white speakers in the South, or in Texas, at least. I don't know what
it might be a blend of, if it is one.

-Wilson

On 8/10/06, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at umr.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Tad bit"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Or more specifically, it started as a blend: from "a tad" + "a little =
> bit."  Evidently there are several examples of blends involving the =
> expression of something very small, e.g. "teeny" from "tiny" + "wee"; =
> "tinetsy" from "tiny" + "teeny". =20
> =20
> Gerald Cohen
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky
> Sent: Thu 8/10/2006 5:25 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Tad bit"
>
>
>
> On Aug 10, 2006, at 7:10 AM, Charles Doyle wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> i'd guess that "tad bit" is just piling on two minimizing modifiers
> -- like "little small" or "tiny little" -- to get the meaning 'not
> just a little bit, but a *tiny* little bit'.
>
> arnold
>
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