Thanks Dave 'tittle'confirmed in my OED also tittling which has a charm
P tittling P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Bircumshaw
Sent: 30 December 2005 14:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: For Robin Hamilton (1)
Some disjecta membra that might interest Monsieur Le Rodent:
1) Daylight robbery. I came across this the other day: one assumes that the
phrase means something blatantly obvious and wrong being done in the sight
others, which is its usage, but its origin is quite different. It comes from
the Window Tax in 17th century England, when, of course, people bricked up
their windows to avoid the financial toll. Hence, it was not 'DAYlight
robbery', as we say it, but rather: 'daylight: robbery'.
2) 'ghetto' comes from the Italian for 'foundry'. This was because there was
an island foundry in Venice which, in the early 16th century, became the
first formalised 'ghetto' for Jews. That was the beginning of the utter
horrors (btw I can't, in this respect, recommend enough the late W.G.
Sebald's great novel 'Austerlitz')
3) The word for the little dot over a lower-case i is apparently a 'tittle'.
I haven't investigated the accuracy of this but I hope it's true.
Best
Dave
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