I am done giving money to the national Democratic Party.

[niyad]

6. jot and tittle

Tittle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the surname, see Tittle (surname).
Not to be confused with title or tilde.
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Lowercase i and j in Liberation Serif, with tittles in red.

A tittle or superscript dot[1] is a small distinguishing mark, such as a diacritic or the dot on a lowercase i or j. The tittle is an integral part of the glyph of i and j, but diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various languages. In most languages, the tittle of i or j is omitted when a diacritic is placed in the tittle's usual position (as í or ĵ , but not when the diacritic appears elsewhere (as į, ɉ .

The word tittle is scarcely used. Its most prominent occurrence is in the Christian Bible at Matthew 5:18: "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (KJV). The quotation uses them as an example of extremely minor details. The phrase "jot and tittle" indicates that every small detail has received attention.

In the Greek original translated as English "jot and tittle" are found the words iota and keraia (Greek: ????ί? .[2] Iota is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet (? . Alternatively, it may represent yodh (י , the smallest letter of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets. "Keraia" is a hook or serif, possibly referring to other Greek diacritics, or possibly to the hooks on Hebrew or Aramaic letters, (ב versus (כ , or additional marks such as crowns (e.g. the Vulgate apex) found in the Torah. A keraia is also used in printing modern Greek numerals.



Jot or tittle
Meaning

A tiny amount.
Origin

The phrase 'jot or tittle' is somewhat tautological, as both jot and tittle refer to tiny quantities. It has passed into English via William Tindale's translation of the New Testament in 1526. It appears there in Matthew 5:18:

One iott or one tytle of the lawe shall not scape.

The more familiar language of the King James Version, 1611, renders that verse as:

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

A jot is the name of the least letter of an alphabet or the smallest part of a piece of writing. It is the Anglicized version of the Greek iota - the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, which corresponds to the Roman 'i'. This, in turn, was derived from the Hebrew word jod, or yodr, which is the the smallest letter of the square Hebrew alphabet. Apart from its specialist typographical meaning, we still use the word jot more generally to mean 'a tiny amount'. Hence, when we have a brief note to make, we 'jot it down'.

jot or tittleA tittle, rather appropriately for a word which sounds like a combination of tiny and little, is smaller still. It refers to a small stroke or point in writing or printing. In classical Latin this applied to any accent over a letter, but is now most commonly used as the name for the dot over the letter 'i'. It is also the name of the dots on dice. In medieval calligraphy the tittle was written as quite large relative to the stem of the 'i'. Since fixed typeface printing was introduced in the 15th century the tittle has been rendered smaller.

The use of the word 'dot' as a small written mark didn't begin until the 18th century. We may have been told at school to dot our i's; Chaucer and Shakespeare would have been told to tittle them.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/jot-or-tittle.html