nitty-gritty

[Jonathan Lighter]

Here's a follow-up from the same source. Apparently this explanation
is pedagogically approved in certain lands:

>I learned in a diversity and equality course (here in the UK) that nitty gritty was reference to unwashed slaves. Nitty = body lice and gritty = dirty and implying that down to the skin nits and grit was all that clothed the naked slave.

JL

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: nitty-gritty
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> the OED's statement that … n-g may be a reduplicated form of "gritty"
>
> HowTF is it the case that a random guess is good enough for the
> editors of the OED, but a genuine memory is *not* good enough for the
> editor of HDAS?!;-)
>
> FWIW, I'm not accustomed to hearing _nitty-gritty_ (uh, _n-g_ means
> "no good"; I was momentarily confused) clipped to "nitty." IME, the
> normal clip is "*gritty*" and not "nitty." This lends a taste of
> credence to the possibility that _nitty-gritty_ *is*, somehow, related
> to _grit(ty)_. OTOH, IMO, an ultimate derivation from that Southern
> food staple, "grits," is just as possible.
>
> That could account for the expression,
>
> _get nitty-gritty_ "act in a socially-unacceptable manner"
>
> That is, perform actions or display manner(ism)s stereotypical of
> those FO[the]B[us] from "the country" - or, these days, from the 'hood
> - especially when these annoy or embarrass boojies.
>
> BTW, I've now heard pronunciations like "boo[Z]ie" and "gara[Z]e" in
> place of traditional "boo[dZ]ie" and "gara[dZ]e" - in the wild, used
> by black teenagers. Collateral damage from desegregation, no doubt.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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