- Tittle
A tittle is a small distinguishing mark, such as a
diacritic or the dot on alowercase "i" or "j". The tittle is an integral part of theglyph of "i" and "j", but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. The tittle of "i" or "j" is omitted when a diacritic is placed in the tittle's usual position (así orĵ ), but not when the diacritic is elsewhere (asį ,ɉ ), and traditionally not in Vietnamese.History and usage
The tittle first appeared in
Latin manuscripts in the11th century , to distinguish the letter "i" from strokes of nearby letters. Although originally a larger mark, it was reduced to a dot when Roman-styletypeface s were introduced.This word is rarely used. Its most prominent occurrence is in the introduction to the
Antithesis of the Law in theGospel of Matthew (5:18): "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled" (NKJV ). The quotation uses them as an example of extremely minor details. The phrase "jot and tittle" indicates that every small detail has received attention. The word tittle in this far older text refers, however, to the Hebrew sign, the tagin.In the Greek original translated as English "jot and tittle" is found iota and keraia. [ [http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/strongs.pl?strongs=2503 Blue Letter Bible] ]
Iota is the smallest letter of theGreek alphabet (ι), but since only capitals were used at the time the GreekNew Testament was written (Ι), it probably represents the Hebrew orAramaic yodh (י) which is the smallest letter of the Hebrew andAramaic alphabet s. "Keraia" is a hook orserif , possibly accents in Greek but more likely hooks on Hebrew or Aramaic letters, (ב) versus (כ), or additional marks such as crowns (asVulgate "apex") found in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, which are the first five books of theJewish Bible . A keraia is also used inGreek numerals .The standard reference for NT Greek is "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature", Bauer, Gingrich, Danker, et al.
Dotless and dotted i
A number of alphabets use dotted and dotless I, both upper and lower case.
In the modern
Turkish alphabet , the absence or presence of a tittle distinguishes two different letters representing two differentphonemes : the letter "I" / "ı", with the absence of a tittle also on the lower case letter, represents theclose back unrounded vowel IPA| [ɯ] , while "İ" / "i", with the inclusion of a tittle even on the capital letter, represents theclose front unrounded vowel IPA| [i] .In the latest Latin based
Kazakh alphabet , there is also a dotted and dotless letter i and I for different sounds.There is only one letter I in Irish; but "i" is undotted in the traditional
uncial Gaelic script to avoid confusion of the tittle with the "buailte" overdot found overconsonant s. Modern texts replace the "buailte" with a "h", and use the same antiqua-descendant fonts, which have a tittle, as other Latin-alphabet languages. However, bilingual road signs use dotless i in lowercase Irish text to better distinguish "i" from "í ". The letter "j" is not used in Irish other than in foreign words.In most Latin-based orthographies, the lowercase letter "i" loses its dot when a diacritical mark, such as an acute or
grave accent , is place atop the letter. However, in Vietnamese, the lowercase letter "i" traditionally retains its dot even when accented. This detail is often lost in computers and on the Internet, due to the obscurity of Vietnamese specialty fonts.Phrases
* It is thought that the phrase "to a T" is derived from this word. [ [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-toa2.htm Where did the phrase "to the T" come from?] ]
* The phrase "to dot one's "i"s and cross one's "t"s" is used to mean "to put the finishing touches to" or "to be pedantic".References
ources
* [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tittle Dictionary.com — Tittle]
* [http://www.bible-history.com/backd2/jot_tittle.html Not One "Jot or Tittle"]External links
* [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2356669 Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon]
* [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=345730 "Tittle" on Everything2]
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