1.05.2009

TITTLE / TILDE

Vamos começar o ano de trabalho “dotting our ‘is’ ” colocando os pingos nos “is” (ainda mais depois da reforma ortográfica!) (ou é melhor esperar passar o carnaval?)

tittle (noun): til (the tilde on “ã”), pingo (no “i”[the dot on an “i”]), ponto, traço:
(1) A small jot, the dot of an [i], cross on a [t], the beard on [ç], or a discritic such as the tilde on [ñ]; (2) something minute, incredibly tiny, smaller even than an iota—indeed, an iota (Greek short [i]) is capped by a tittle.

tilde (noun): A mark used over an n (ñ) or over a vowel (ã). or to express negation in mathematics or logic, etc. You cannot use tildes ( ~ ) as part of a URI on Windows NT systems. Please DO NOT use the tilde character in your filenames. Players can press the tilde key ( the ~ key ) from any game screen to bring down ( and/or raise ) their console. Google has added a synonym function, using the tilde symbol ( the curly horizontal line or ' ~ ' to be exact ).

"Tittle" is unrelated to the verb "to tittle," which was clipped from the rhyme compound "tittle-tattle." It should not be confused with a titter, either, for that is a suppressed giggle. Think of a tittle as the smallest thing or amount visible without a microscope. Originally, "tittle" referred to those itsy-bitsy appendages added to letters in some languages, "Red Ard did almost fail French for consistently omitting the tittles on his written French." Although we classify today's word as a noun, it probably is used today more often as a quantifier, specifying how much, "When Lucinda dropped her ice cream cone on Hardy Root's head, he didn't move a tittle (não moveu um músculo). "I'll quote him to a tittle," meaning precisely, without omitting so much as a tittle. Somewhere over the years that followed, "to a tittle" was apparently confused with the phrase, "cross all your Ts (and dot your Is)," which also referred to exactitude. Ultimately, "to a tittle" was reduced to "to a T." Now we can quote or describe someone to a T, meaning absolutely exactly.
Source: YourDictionary