A Tit for a Tat

Maven's Word of the Day asks and answers this question:

Why is retribution or a fair exchange "tit for tat"?

Both tit and tat are archaic words meaning 'a light blow'. The entire expression thus means 'a blow for a blow', like 'an eye for an eye'. Both words were used as verbs, too: a popular song of the late sixteenth century had a refrain, "Come tit me, come tat me,/Come throw a kiss at me."

These words are probably of imitative origin, with a vowel variation found in other words expressing striking such as tip and tap or pit-a-pat. The tit is not related to other tit words, such as the ones (each of independent origin) meaning 'a small bird' (e.g. "titmouse"), 'a breast', or the first element of "tit-bit" (in America usually euphemized to "tid-bit," but not related to the 'breast' word).

The phrase tit for tat is first found in the sixteenth century. It is probably a variant of tip for tap, of similar origin but found a century earlier. The tip in this earlier phrase is the same word as in the baseball expression "a foul tip."

As you know, I am a loving person and I attempt to always treat my friend Kari with utmost respect. So last week, when something very funny happened at the Y, I chose not to blog it. She, however, decided that she finds it necessary to blog this story today.

So....

Last week we are on the way to the Y and she was telling me about her new work out clothing that she had bought at Sam's club. No, that's not the funny part, except that yeah, it's funny that she shops for clothes at such a classy place. But anyway, I digress already....

So she is telling me about her new yoga pants and her shirt that says "Breathe" (and no, that isn't the funny part either, but yeah, I know, dorky, huh? You wouldn't caught me dead with ANY saying plastered across my chest but she is always decorating that part of her anatomy with things like words or coffee cups or colored splotches or whatever...

So we get into the special needs locker room and she pulls off her jacket, and in Vanna White fashion, moves her hand in front of her chest to display her shirt. But apparently the cold weather had ... ahem.... affected her and she basically was drawing attention to ... let's see ... the affected pieces of anatomy with great enthusiasm.

So this morning when she said she was going to notify y'all about what I did, I simply said, and then I'll tell MY readers about the Breathe shirt.

A tit for a tat.