nit1
/nɪt
/noun informal
1The egg or young form of a louse or other parasitic insect, especially the egg of a human head louse attached to a hair.Lice lay nits on hair shafts close to the skin's surface, where the temperature is perfect for keeping warm until they hatch....
- If you do not want to use these products, you have to pick the lice and nits out of the hair by hand or use a special comb to remove them.
- For an effective treatment for nits and hair lice, soak at least 20 seeds for an hour in warm water.
2British A foolish person: you stupid nit!
Phrases
pick nits
Derivatives
nitty
- Logically enough, the movie tackles the Powerpuff origins, the nitty details of how they came to be and how their superhero-ness was forged.
- Then there were the little nitty things: doing my own computer support.
- Most of the story is the trial and all the boring nitty details therein - the only bright spot is the freakish D.A.
Origin
Old English hnitu, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch neet and German Nisse.
A nit is the tiny egg of a human head louse, and was in use for something small or insignificant by Shakespeare's day. However, nitwit is not recorded until the 1920s and nit-picking or pedantic fault-finding did not come into the language until the 1950s. The idea here is of painstakingly searching through someone's hair for nits. In Australia children shout ‘nit!’ to warn their friends when a teacher is approaching. The person who is keeping watch is said to keep nit. Nit is this context is probably an alteration of nix (late 18th century), which comes from German nichts, ‘not’.
Rhymes
nit2
/nɪt/exclamation Australian informal
Used as a warning that someone is approaching.
Phrases
keep nit
Origin
Late 19th century: probably from nix3.