Text 5337, 72 rader
Skriven 2006-07-30 18:04:00 av Robert E Starr JR (5834.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Babylon 5: Lost t Tal
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* * * This message was from Amy Guskin to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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@MSGID: <0001HW.C0F25D9F02853FDAF0407530@news.verizon.net>
@REPLY: <5qKdneaTjrLIFF7ZnZ2dnUVZ_rCdnZ2d@comcast.com>
>> On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:20:00 -0400, Nicole Massey wrote
(in article <-4ydnbODe6TwuFHZnZ2dnUVZ_oadnZ2d@comcast.com>):

> 
> "Rob Perkins" <rperkins@usa.net> wrote in message 
> news:4j2ggtF6074jU2@individual.net...
>> Joseph DeMartino wrote:
>>> David M. Palmer wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Of course not.  Nit points never pay any royalties.  That's why you
>>>> alwys want gross.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> But nits *are* gross!
>>> 
>>> (Ever see one under high-magnification?  Yuck!)
>> 
>> Little white egg, attached to a hair. Yuck?
>> 
>> Unless you're talking about the little transparent baby hatchlings from 
>> the nit...
>> 
>> Rob
> 
> In terms of the phrase "nitpicking", a nit is a small ball of cloth that is 
> produced by yarn in things lie sweaters and such. Nitpickers were the people 
> who removed such things from the garment so that it had a smooth appearance, 
> and as such, were required to be very exacting and detail oriented This is 
> where the term in common use came from.  <<

I can't believe this.  I mean, I'm sure that the garment industry used the 
term in that way, but the vermin-removal meaning has _got_ to predate it, 
considering the history of human beings and, well, vermin.

Here's one bit I found on the website www.phrases.org.uk:

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NITPICKER - " 'She can wel pyke out lyce and nitis,' William Caxton, the 
first English printer, wrote in a book of fables he translated from the 
French and published in 1484. But it took centuries before a nitpicker, 'one 
who picks lice eggs (nits) from one's body or clothes,' changed in meaning to 
one who looks for and finds small errors (as small as nits), a pedant. I 
guess that the expression is an Americanism dating to the late 19th century." 
From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts 
on File, New York, 1997).

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I skimmed through Zinsser's tome, "Rats, Lice and History" (yes, I have a 
copy - when I worked for Bantam, it was one of those books that you always 
saw sitting on a shelf in editorial, so I grabbed a copy), but didn't find 
anything about it there, pity.

And, sadly, I don't have a copy of the OED.  But I was not able to find any 
definition online, or in actual dictionaries in my home, that didn't 
predominantly (and in fact only) refer to the act of cleaning nits (lice) out 
of hair.

Nicole, do you have any idea from when the garment-industry usage dates?

Amy
                                                 
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