I have a query that has gone unanswered for nearly five years. Help! I married a Brit, quit my job, and moved to Herts (we lived south of Cambridge for 6 months.) When we would watch the telly, there was a commercial for Tesco that said, "Every Little Helps". We in America would say, "Every little bit helps". So why drop the bit? Thanks for any explanations you can offer!

Welcome, G9Poof! How great to see you here! Indianapolis?! There were 4 of us from Wordcraft there this weekend!

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When we would watch the telly

I see some of that Britishness wore off on you! "Telly" seems very British to me.

I'll wait for our British friends to answer this one!

It seems to be an idiom of long standing. Here's a Punch cartoon from 1850; it's also the title of a reel.

There are many Web search hits for the phrase, about half of which mention Tesco, and most of which are from the UK.

It's not a normal grammatical structure for anyone, apart from this phrase, as you can check by searching for "every little is", "every little was", "every little would", and noticing that adding "-help" to the search reduces the number of hits to none or virtually none. So it only exists in that specific phrase (and variants like "every little would help").

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When we would watch the telly

Is the use of "we would" a US construction? I'd have said, "When we watched the Telly".

As aput says, "every little helps" is idiomatic and the construction is not used in other ways - nobody would says "The big helps" for example, although they might say, "The big picture helps us to..."

Saying "we would" is no doubt a Hoosier construction, as most everyone I know speaks in the same manner. Some a lot worse. Apparently I need to mind my hick ways before I pose a question. Consider my hand smacked...

My poor sentence structure aside, thanks for the feedback. There are other quesions I would like to ask, but I'll take a step back and hold those until much later.

Kalleh, thanks for the warm welcome!! I'm glad to hear you were in our lovely city recently. And for you to have the opportunity to see the Eiteljorg since its renovation is great, I understand it is phenomenal! Thanks again aput and Richard English for your responses.

Hi, G9Poof! It's great to have another Hoosier on WC!

Thanks, Sunflower, for the Hoosier hospitality!

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Richard English: Quote: "When we would watch the telly." Is the use of "we would" a US construction? I'd have said, "When we watched the Telly".

I don't think its regional at all. To me, G9's construction is verb structure with a different meaning. It conveys the sense of recurrent, repeated action.

For a parallel, compare "When I went to Paris, I saw the Eiffel Tower" (a single trip) with "When I would go out for coffee in college, I would often see my professor."

Hi, G9Poof, and welcome to the asylum! No need to feel shy about posing any and all questions here, as we're a friendly lot. So toss us a bone and let us gnaw on it!

Asa Lovejoy, AKA Sunflower's lesser half

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My poor sentence structure aside, thanks for the feedback.

G9, we often talk about American/English difference here. I am sure that's what Richard was referring to.

Pose away...we'll love it, I am sure!

Thanks to a slight bit of prompting, I will add to my initial post. I offered the query regarding the tag line for Tesco after having a discussion with my husband. He said the word "bit" or "bits" had a hidden meaning, thus Tesco left out the offending word. I am wondering if "bits" actually is British slang for one's private parts, or is my husband just winding me up (again)? I do tend to be naive.

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I am wondering if "bits" actually is British slang for one's private parts

That is right; 'bits' can be used in that way, as in "While I was climbing the fence, I caught my bits on some barbed wire." However, 'bit' (singular) is not used it that way, so I can't see that Tesco wouuld have had to worry about doubles entendres.

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Originally posted by G9Poof:
I have a query that has gone unanswered for nearly five years. Help! I married a Brit, quit my job, and moved to Herts (we lived south of Cambridge for 6 months.) When we would watch the telly, there was a commercial for Tesco that said, "Every Little Helps". We in America would say, "Every little bit helps". So why drop the bit? Thanks for any explanations you can offer!

Hello, and welcome (as one TV host whose name escapes me used to say) .

As several people have said, it's a common usage over here, but I think it also makes it "snappier". "Every little helps" trips off the tongue easier than "Every little bit helps".

We say "I could do with a bit of help", or "I could do with a little help" interchangeably, but few people would combine the two and say "I could do with a little bit of help".

I don’t know about British slang, but almost anything can be twisted into a sexual meaning in the good ole U.S.A. I once knew a guy who nicknamed a girl “Little Bit.” Now, what do you suppose that meant?

The OED Online recorded “muslin” as referring to a woman or women collectively, especially in “a bit (also bundle) of muslin,” and gives an 1823 quote: “You've got a bit of muslin on the sly, have you?” It says this meaning is now rare, and the last quote is from 1924. It compares it to “skirt,” a woman; “the skirt,” women collectively; and “a bit of skirt,” a woman, especially an attractive one; dating back to 1560. The last quote given was from 1977: “They mustn't quarrel over a bit of skirt.” It says this use of “skirt” is “now slang.” The use of the word “now” implies that at one time it was not slang.

By 1923 “bit,” short for “bit of muslin,” meant woman or girl. It compares this to “piece,” short for “piece of flesh” or “piece of goods” (dialect) or for “piece of ass” or “piece of tail,” which it labels “coarse U.S. slang,” meaning “a person, esp. a woman, regarded as an object of sexual gratification; hence, sexual intercourse …” The first quote was from 1593: “Oh, she is a tall peece of flesh.” The next quote was from the immortal Bard himself, William Shakespeare, in his 1611 Cymbeline (p. 86): “Why should we be tender, To let an arrogant peece of flesh threat vs?” Of course, the term is still in use. The last quote given was from 1978: “He..thought she was a flaming, fabulous piece of ass.” See, we men still know how to compliment a woman.

The OED Online says that an obsolete meaning of bit is “A leathern bottle or flask; the uterus or womb; a fire-bucket.” So now you know what a woman and a fire-bucket have in common. It gave a quote from 1000 but, since it was written in (I assume) Old English, I couldn’t understand it, so I don’t really know what sense of the meaning it was referring to. The quote from c. 1250 was likewise unintelligible to me, except for the word “wombe.”

Finally, a dictionary of English slang offers these definitions:

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bit Noun. A woman. Abb. of 'bit of fluff' or 'bit of skirt', generally a person viewed sexually. Derog.

bits Noun. A euphemism for the genitals, male or female.

Tinman

I can't say I've ever seen or heard a 'bit of muslin' used for a woman or girl. One phrase that may be a descendent, however, is a 'bit of stuff'. 'Stuff' can mean 'cloth', and a 'bit of stuff' means a woman, particularly a mistress, as in "He's keeping a bit of stuff on the side."

And in similar vein, "...Hey, look at the thrupennies on that...!"