tits

[captainkirky]

hi how do you get from yellow/blue/ great tits to a slang name for womens breasts?

[jno]

you probably don't. Tit/teat seems to come from the noise made by a suckling baby; it's similar in many languages (the Grand Tetons in the Rockies are supposed to be breast-shaped, though darned if I can see it myself). The bird's name comes from titmouse, originally meaning a small mouse - that 'tit' seems to be an old word for small.

[Postdog]

or, far more likely, it's a corruption (through dialect and such) of the word Teet.

[B00]

I'm just pondering.....does the French word for small, petite, have anything to do with this????

[jno]

it could be, BOO, though I don't know of any proof. Very common words like 'little' often have their origins lost in history, so it's quite on the cards that they have the same distant ancestor.

[SteveD]

Tit (in the sense of the group of birds) = titmouse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titmouse

Nothing to do with "busty substances"!

[jno]

Interesting that the Americans call them titmice in full SteveD - they're also the people who have roosters rather than the other word. No rudery in the animal kingdom over there.

[tinkertontom]

I think the name tits for womens breasts comes from a garment maker Otto Titzling who designd the garment for singer Olafsen Swanhilda in 1912 but unfortunatly did not patent the idea

[hiflier]

Lady turned on her radio, heard someone announce 'great tits - like coconuts'. Complained furiously to Lord Reith, he made enquiries, called lady back and told her that, had she switched her radio on two seconds earlier, she would have heard 'bluetits like peanuts and...'