BBB Etymology - To a T

From Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets ... Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law'. (Matthew, 5: 17-18). Jot is from the Latin iota, meaning the Greek letter i, the smallest in the alphabet. A jot is therefore a little bit, as is an iota. Tittle is a rare word meaning a small mark used in printing or writing; in jot or tittle it means the dot on the letter i and therefore merely reinforces the smallness implicit in jot. Tittle also survives in "to a t" (short for tittle), meaning 'with minute exactness'.