A Titch

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Kelly calling from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Hey, Kelly. What’s on your mind? Well, I was calling because growing up, my family had this word that was in a vocabulary that I thought was a word that was in everyone’s vocabulary.

And when I got to college and I used it in a sentence one day, some of my friends said, what are you talking about? And it kind of blew my mind that we had this word that that not everyone knew about. And the word is pitch. And to us, it kind of had two different meanings. In one context, it means just a little bit. And in the other context, it means to tear something out, like something that has perforations. When you tear that out, we would say that you would be pitching that out. And I was just wondering if you had any insight to maybe how we got to know about that or if anyone else in the world uses this word or…

So, Kelly, how are you spelling this word?

I would spell it T-I-T-C-H.

T as in Thomas, I-T-C-H.

So, titch.

Correct.

Titch.

So, I just want to titch more milk in my coffee, something like that.

Yeah.

Yep.

Let’s dismiss with the second definition. I’ve never heard of it, and it is in none of my dictionaries, meaning to tear out.

So, that may actually be a family word for you guys.

We’ll know soon because our callers will let us know.

That’s right, but I wish I had a word for that when you’re pulling something that’s perforated.

Yeah.

Well, now you do.

Yeah.

That’s a nice feeling, right, when the perf goes perfectly well.

Yeah, it’s perfectly, the perf.

But the first one, a titch, the titch of something meaning a small amount, here’s a strange and interesting, well, some odd things are going on with that.

One of them is most of the dictionaries that you consult on this word, I believe are wrong. And I say this with, like, very high confidence.

They suggest that it’s related to a performer of very small stature. Perhaps he was a little person who took the name of Little Titch, which is short for a lord who was the last name of Titch Born, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, he imitated somebody very wealthy on stage and was his shtick, and they called him Little Titch for short.

However, Titch for a small person was very, very rare, even in the United Kingdom, even in the height of its heyday, which was prior to the 1880s.

So then we have this giant gap, a giant gap where a titch of something, meaning a small amount, doesn’t really start to pop up, at least in the newspapers, until the 1960s at the earliest.

And then it starts in Canada, not in the United Kingdom.

And the strongest evidence that we have is titch is just a dialect pronunciation of touch. And you probably heard something similar. Can I have just a touch more sugar? Can I have, can you just, I need a touch more time to finish this project, blah, blah, blah.

A touch just meaning just the barest small amount.

Okay.

I mean, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you’re not the only person who uses your family.

No, not at all.

No, we’ve got it continuously rising in popularity from the 1960s well into the 1980s, crosses over into the United States not long after that, and then it starts to pop up in the United Kingdom.

But a titch of something still is not that common. And as a matter of fact, it doesn’t appear in this particular usage in this way in a lot of dictionaries. That’s how unusual it is.

Yeah, and I don’t remember the context of which way I had used it when I was in school and somebody looked at me and said, I don’t know what word that is. But none of them had heard it in either context.

So, yeah, I think it’s a dialect pronunciation of touch, and it does not come from the little person who was a stage performer in the United Kingdom, despite what some dictionaries suggest.

Makes sense.

Cool?

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for the history. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Kelly.

Thanks, Kelly.

Yep.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye.

Well, we hear these kinds of stories all the time where somebody moves across the country and uses a term, and everybody looks at them like they have two heads.

What was your word like that?

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