Tit for Tat

Okay, ONE more. Here's a dorky thing that I have been laughing about for a week: I was having dinner with some friends last week and somehow the topic of tatting came up--like, old fashioned lacework akin to crochet but slightly different, in ways that I'm not entirely clear on. Someone said, "Huh. Tat. I wonder if that's where we get the expression 'tit for tat.'" I, immediately focusing on the word "tit," started thinking of New Orleans and how perhaps Tit for Tat could have been an early form of a Mardi Gras Celebration, with lacework replacing the beads. Then I started laughing loudly, for quite a while longer than anyone else at the table.

Whooh, that one still gets me.

Comments

[Five17]

"Tit for Tat" actually came from the phrase "tip for tap" meaning a blow for a blow. It was a phrase used in the mid-1400s, but onomatopoeia took over sometime prior to 1556 and we're left with tit for tat.

"Tit" the way you mean it wasn't used in print until American Graphitti (1928), but it has US origins... and "tat" meaning "worthless goods" (and slut) was around as early as the 1950s.

In Mardi Gras, krewes began throwing sometime after the 1920's and at somepoint the beads must have been referred to as "tats."

Some your theory is very likely right... except the lacework bit.