Nitwit
It means a stupid,
silly, or intellectually deficient person. The Oxford English Dictionary gives a 1914 citation from the Los Angeles Times (06/05/1914) as its
first written instance: “After her trip to Virginia,
Miss Helen Morton was quoted as saying that Chicago men were ‘nit wits’.” The
quotation marks around nit wits
indicates that the word was still relatively new in 1914. In time, when a term
is used often enough and long enough, the quotation marks disappear.
The OED points to nit, meaning the
egg of a louse or other parasitic insect, as the source. Shakespeare later used
the word nit to designate an insignificant, inconsequential, or
contemptible person. So, an evolution from insect to bug brain.
But
there is an alternate explanation. Merriam-Webster,
along with several other dictionaries, thinks that the nit portion probably
came from the German dialectical nit, meaning not. So, not having an ounce of
intelligence.
An
allied word takes us back to lice again. Nitpicking – petty criticism or
fault-finding on a trivial level – summons up images of someone removing tiny
lice eggs from a scalp.
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